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A HISTORY OF 

ENGLISH LITERATURE 


K 


BY 


WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

i ( 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

AND 


ROBERT MORSS LOVETT 


ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CHICAGO 




NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 

1904 


.fR£5 

’ ~ \C\ o % 


Copyright, 1902, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 


48 65 5 5 

AUG 19 1942 


PREFACE 


f 


Several dangers lie before the writer of an elementary 
history of literature. He may conceive his task too ambi- 
tiously, and in his zeal for thoroughness may lose that 
clearness and simplicity of plan which is indispensable in 
the first presentation of a large subject. He may, on the 
other hand, be tempted to simplify his matter artificially, 
and in so doing may fail to give the student any safe sub- 
structure upon which to build in later study. Again, in 
striving to be scientific, he may be only dry ; or in a 
wholesome desire to be entertaining, he may be only gos- 
sipy or nebulous. The present volume, whether or not it 
avoids these dangers, has been prepared with full conscious- 
ness of them. An attempt has here been made to present 
the history of English literature from the earliest times to 
our own day, in a historical scheme simple enough to be 
apprehended by young students, yet accurate and sub- 
stantial enough to serve as a permanent basis for study, 
however far the subject is pursued. But within the limits 
of this formal scheme, the fact has been held constantly in 
mind that literature, being the vital and fluid thing it is, 
must be taught, if at all, more by suggestion, and by stim- 
ulation of the student’s own instinctive mental life, than by 
dogmatic assertion. More than any other branch of study, 
literature demands on the part of the teacher an attitude 
of respect toward the intelligence of the student ; and if 
at any point the authors of this book may seem to have 


v 


VI 


PKEFACE 


taken too much alertness of mind for granted, their de- 
fence must be that only by challenge and invitation can 
any permanent result in the way of intellectual growth 
be accomplished. The historian of English literature deals 
with the most fascinating of stories, the story of the imagi- 
native career of a gifted race ; he is in duty bound not to 
cheapen or to dull his theme, but, so far as in him lies, to 
give those whom he addresses a realizing sense of the mag- 
nitude of our common heritage in letters. To do this, he 
must work in the literary spirit, and with freedom of ap- 
peal to all the latent capabilities of his reader’s mind. 

The proportions of this book have been carefully con- 
sidered. A full half of the space has been given to the 
last two centuries, and much more to the nineteenth cen- 
tury than to the eighteenth. These and other apportion- 
ments of ' space have been made, not on absolute grounds, 
but with the design of throwing into prominence what is 
most important for a student to learn upon his first ap- 
proach to the subject. The chief figures in each era have 
been set in relief, andThe minor figures have been grouped 
about them, in an endeavor thus to suggest their relative 
significance. A full working bibliography, including texts, 
biography, and criticism, has been added, in the hope that 
it may be of assistance not only in the current work of the 
classroom, but also as a guide for later study. 

The thanks of the authors are due to Professor F. N. 
Robinson, of Harvard University, for his kindness in criti- 
cising the contents of the early chapters. 

w. y. m. 

R. M. L. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Anglo-Saxon Period 1 

II. The Norman-French Period 21 

III. The Age of Chaucer 35 

IV. The Renaissance : N on-Dramatic Literature 

to the Death of Spenser ...... 60 

V. The Renaissance : The Drama before Shake- 
speare . . . 4 . . 88 

VI. The Renaissance : Shakespeare 106 

VII. The Seventeenth Century : Shakespeare’s 
Contemporaries and Successors in the 
Drama 124 

VIII. The Seventeenth Century: Non -Dramatic 

Literature before the Restoration . .139 

IX. The Seventeenth Century : The Restora- 
tion 174 

X. The Eighteenth Century: The Reign' of 

Classicism 190 

XI. The Eighteenth Century: The Novel . . 229 

XII. The Eighteenth Century: The Revival of 

Romanticism 253 

vii 


CONTENTS 


viii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII. The Nineteenth Century : The Triumph of 

Romanticism 270 

XIV. The Nineteenth Century : The Victorian 

Era 309 

XV. The Nineteenth Century : The Novel . . . 353 

Reading Guide 385 


Index 


413 


A HISTORY OF 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 



A HISTORY OF 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 


CHAPTER I 

THE AHGLO-SAXOH PEEIOD 

I 

To find the beginnings of English literature we must go 
back to a time when the ancestors of the English people 
lived on the continent of Europe, and spoke a tongue which, 
though related in its roots to modern English, is unintelli- 
gible to us without special study. Anglo-Saxon, or Old 
English, belongs to the low-German family of languages, of 
which Dutch is the best modern representative'; and the 
men who spoke it lived, when history first discovers them, 
along the German ocean from the mouth of the The Angl0 . 
Rhine to the peninsula of Jutland. They were Saxon Tribes, 
divided into three principal branches : the Saxons, dwelling 
near the mouth of the Elbe ; the Angles, inhabiting the 
southwest part of Denmark ; and the Jutes, extending 
north of the Angles into modern Jutland. 

How extensive these tribes were, and how far into the 
interior their territories reached, we do not know. That 
portion of them which concerns us, dwelt along _ . „ 
the sea ; their early poetry gives glimpses of war^and Sea * 
little tribal or family settlements, bounded on 
one side by wild moors and dense forests, where dwelt 
monstrous creatures of mist and darkness, and on the other 

1 


2 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


by the stormy northern ocean, filled likewise with shapes 
of shadowy fear. Whether from superstition or from the 
physical difficulty of the country, these shore tribes seem 
not to have cared to penetrate far inland. Their two pas- 
sions, war and wandering, found satisfaction in the life of 
the sea. As soon as spring had unlocked the harbors, their 
boats would push out in search of booty and adventure : 
sometimes to wreak blood-feud on a neighboring tribe, 
sometimes to harry a monastery on the coasts of Roman 
Gaul,- or to sail along the white cliffs of England, their 
future home. This sea-faring life, full of danger and 
change, was the fruitful source of early poetry. When- 
ever an Anglo-Saxon poet mentions the sea his lines kin- 
dle. Upon it he lavishes a wealth of imaginative epithet ; 
it is the “ swan-road,” the “ sealbath,” the “ path of the 
whales.” And the ship is treated with equal enthusiasm ; 
it is the “sea-steed,” the “wave-house of warriors”; its 
keel is “wreathed with foam like the neck of a swan.” 
The darker aspects of the sea are given with equal fervor. 
It is characteristic of the grim nature of the Anglo-Saxon 
that he should fill with terror and gloom the element which 
he most loved to inhabit. 

The poetry which has come down to us from this early 
period has been worked over by later hands and given a 
Their Re- Christian coloring. But from other sources we 
ligion. know what were the primitive gods of the race : 
Tiu, a mysterious and dreadful deity of war ; Woden, father 
of the later dynasty of gods, and patron of seers and trav- 
ellers ; Thor, the god of thunder ; Frea, mother of the 
gods and giver of fruitfulness. These are commemorated 
in our names for the days of the week, Tuesday, Wednes- 
day, Thursday, and Friday. The rites of Eostre, a mys- 
terious goddess of the dawn, survive, though strangely al- 
tered, in the Christian festival of Easter. In studying the 
early poetry, we must put out of our minds, as far as we 
can, all those ideals of life and conduct which come from 


THE AHGLO-SAXOH PERIOD 


3 


Christianity, and remember that we have to do with men 
whose gods were only magnified images of their own wild 
natures : men who delighted in bloodshed and in plunder, 
and were much given to deep drinking in the mead-hall ; 
but who nevertheless were sensitive to blame and praise, 
were full of rude chivalry and dignity, and were alert to 
the poetry of life, to its mystery and its pathos. 

Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors had in an eminent degree 
also that passion which gives the first impulse to literature 
among a primitive people — love of glory. When the first 
recorded hero of the race, Beowulf, has met his death, and 
his followers are recalling his noble nature, they say as 
their last word that “he was of all world-kings the most 
desirous of praise.” It was not enough for such men as he 
that they should spend their lives in glorious adventures ; 
they desired to see their names and their deeds spread 
among distant peoples and handed down to unborn gener- 
ations. Hence the poet, who alone could insure this fame, 
was held in high esteem. Two classes of sing- Their 
ers were recognized, first the gleeman (gledman), singers, 
who did not create his own songs, but merely (like the 
Greek rhapsodist) chanted what he had learned from oth- 
ers ; and second the scop, the poet proper, who took the 
crude material of history and legend which lay about him, 
and shaped it into song. Sometimes the scop was perma- 
nently attached to the court of an aetheling, or lord, was 
granted land and treasure, and was raised by virtue of his 
poet-craft to the same position of honor which the other 
followers of the aetheling held by virtue of their prowess in 
battle. Sometimes he wandered from court to court, de- 
pending for a hospitable reception upon the curiosity of 
his host concerning the stories he had to chant. 

Two very ancient bits of poetry, one of them probably 
the oldest in our literature, tell of the fortunes of the 
scop. One of them deals with the wandering and the 
other with the stationary singer. 


4r 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Widsith. 


The first is the fragment known as “ Widsith,” or “ The 
Far-wanderer .” The poem opens, — “ Widsith spake, un- 
locked his word hoard ; he who many a tribe had 
met on earth, who had travelled through many a 
folk.” Then follows a list of famous princes of the past, an 
enumeration of the various peoples and countries the bard 
has visited, and praises of those princes who have entertained 
him generously. He declares that he has been “ with Caesar, 
who had sway over the joyous cities,” and even with the 
Israelites, the Egyptians, and the Indians. The poem ends 
with a general description of the wandering singer's life, 
touched at the close with the stoic melancholy which occurs 
so often in Anglo-Saxon poetry ; — “ Thus roving, with 
song-devices wander the gleemen through many lands. 

. . . Ever north or south they find one knowing in 

songs and liberal of gifts, who before his court will exalt 
his grandeur and show his earl-ship ; until all departs, light 
and life together.” This fragment has been held by some 
scholars to date, in part at least, from the fourth century. 
If so it is the oldest bit of verse in any modern language, 
and with it English literature “ unlocks its word-hoard.” 

' The second of these poems dealing with the fortunes of 
the Sc6p is probably not nearly so old. It is called “ Deor's 
Lament,” and again the sc6p himself speaks. His 
skill has been eclipsed by another singer, Heor- 
renda, and his lord has taken away from him his land-right 
and his place at court, in order to bestow them upon the suc- 
cessful rival. The poet comforts himself by recalling other 
misfortunes which men and women in past time have lived 
to overcome, and ends each rude strophe with the refrain, 
“ That he endured, this also may I.” The personal nature 
of the theme, the plaintive sadness of the tone, and above 
all the refrain, give the poem extraordinary interest. It 
has been called the first English lyric, — with justice, if we 
take both the word English and the word lyric in the broad- 
est sense. 


Deor’s 

Lament. 


THE ANGLO-SAXOX PERIOD 


5 


But by far the most important work which remains to 
us from the pagan period of Anglo-Saxon poetry is the 
long poem entitled, from its hero, Beowulf. It 
is something over three thousand lines in length, 
and, though the manuscript is broken here and there, these 
breaks are not sufficient to mar the effect of artistic com- 
pleteness. It perhaps existed at first in the form of short 
songs, which were sung among the Angles and Jutes, 
inhabiting what is now Denmark, and among the Goths, 
in southern Sweden. Probably as early as the sixth cen- 
tury these lays had begun to coalesce, but just when the 
poem took its present form we do not know.* The story 
of the poem is as follows : — 

Hrothgar, king of the West-Danes, has built for himself 
near the sea a great hall, named Heorot, where he may sit 
with his thanes at the mead-drinking, and listen to the 
chanting of the gleemen. For a while he lives in happi- 
ness, and is known far and wide as a splendid and liberal 
prince. But one night there comes from the H rothgar 
wild march-land, the haunt of all unearthly and and Grendel * 
malign creatures, a terrible monster named Grendel. En- 
tering the mead-hall he slays thirty of the sleeping Danes, 
and carries their corpses away to his lair. The next night 
the same thing is repeated. No mortal power seems 
able to cope with the gigantic foe. In the winter nights 
Grendel couches in the splendid hall, defiling all its bright 
ornaments. For twelve winters this scourge afflicts the 
West-Danes, until HrothgaPs spirit is broken. 

At last the story of Grendel’s deeds crosses the sea to 
Gothland, where young Beowulf dwells at the court of his 
uncle. King Ilygelac. He determines to go to HrothgaFs 
assistance. With fifteen companions he embarks. “ De- 
parted then over the wavy sea the foamy-necked floater, 

* In all probability the development of Beowulf into a complete poem 
took place largely on English soil, and was completed by the end of the 
eighth century. 


6 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


most like to a bird.” At dawn of the second day the voy- 
agers catch sight of the promontories of Hrothgar’s land ; 
The coming and soon, from the top of the cliffs, they behold 
of Beowulf. j n va j e beneath them the famous hall, “ rich 
and gold-variegated, most glorious of dwellings under the 
firmament.” The young heroes in their “ shining war byr- 
nies,”* and with their spears like a “grey asliwood above 
their heads,” are ushered into the hall “ where Hrothgar 
sits, old and hairless, amid his band of earls. * Beowulf 
craves permission to cleanse Heorot of its pest, and Hroth- 
gar consents that the Goths shall abide Grendehs coming, in 
the hall that night. Meanwhile, until darkness draws on, 
the thanes of Hrothgar and the followers of Beowulf sit 
drinking mead, (t the bright sweet liquor,” and listening to 
the songs of the gleeman. The feast draws to a close when 
Wealtheow, HrothgaHs queen, after solemnly handing the 
mead-cup to her lord and to Beowulf, and bidding them 
“ be blithe at the beer-drinking,” goes through the hall 
distributing gifts among the thanes. The king, queen, 
and their followers then withdraw to another building for 
the night, while Beowulf and his men lie down, each with 
his armor hung on the nail above his head, to wait for the 
coming of Grendel. All fall asleep except Beowulf, who 
“ awaits in angry mood the battle-meeting.” 

The coming of the monster is described with grewsome 
force. “ Then came from the moors, under the misty 
The Fight kills, Grendel stalking. . . Straightway he 

m ihe Hail. rus bed on the door, fast with fire-hardened 
bands. . . On the variegated floor the fiend trod ; he 
went wroth of mood, from his eyes stood a horrid light like 
flame. . . He saw in the hall many warriors sleeping, a 

kindred band. . . Then his heart laughed.” He seizes 

one of the warriors, bites his “ bone-casings,” drinks the 
blood from his veins, and greedily devours him even to 
the hands and feet. Next he makes for Beowulf, but the 

* Corselets of mail. 


THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 


7 


hero, who has in his hands the strength of thirty men, 
seizes the fiend with such a mighty hand-grip that he is 
terror-stricken and turns to flee. Beowulf keeps his grip, 
and a fearful struggle begins. The warriors, awakened 
by the combat and the “ horrid lay sung by God’s denier,” 
try to bring help with their swords, but no mortal weapon 
can wound Grendel. At last the monster wrenches his 
own arm from its socket and flees to his lair to die, leaving 
Beowulf to nail the ghastly trophy in triumph above 
the door of Heorot. 

In the morning there is great rejoicing. The king, 
with the queen and her company of maidens, come through 
the meadows to gaze in wonder on the huge arm and claw 
nailed beneath the gold roof of the hall. When the even- 
ing feast begins, Beowulf sits between the two sons of the 
king, and receives the precious gifts, — jewels, rings, and a 
golden necklace, — which the queen presents to him. But 
at night-fall, when the warriors have again lain down to 
sleep in the hall, Grendel’s mother comes to take vengeance 
for her son. She seizes one of Hrothgar’s nobles, Aes- 
chere, and bears him away to her watery den. 

Beowulf vows to seek the new foe at the bottom of her 
fen-pool, and there grapple with her. With Hrothgar and 
a band of followers he goes along the cliffs TheFight 
and windy promontories which bound the moor beneath the 
on the seaward side, until he comes to GrendeFs 
lair. It is a sea-pool, shut in by precipitous rocks, and 
overhung by the shaggy trunks and aged writhen boughs 
of a “ joyless wood.” Trembling passers-by have seen fire 
fleeting on the waves at night, and the hart wearied by the 
hounds will lie down and die on these banks rather than 
plunge into the unholy waters. The pool is so deep that it 
is a day’s space before Beowulf reaches the bottom. Snakes 
and beasts of the shining deep make war on him as he de- 
scends. At last he finds himself in a submarine cave where 
the “ mere-wife ” is lurking, and a ghastly struggle begins. 


8 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Once the giantess throws Beowulf to the ground, and 
sitting astride his body draws out her broad short knife to 
despatch him ; but with a superhuman effort he struggles 
up again, throws away his broken sword and seizes from a 
heap of arms a magic blade, forged by giants of old time ; 
with it he hews off the head of Grendel’s mother, and then 
that of Grendel, whose dead body he finds lying in the 
cave. So poisonous is the blood of Grendel that it melts 
the metal of the blade, leaving only the curved hilt in 
Beowulf’s hand. When he reappears with his trophies at 
the surface of the water, all have given him up for dead. 
Great is the jubilation when the hero appears with his 
thanes, and throws upon the floor of the mead-hall the two 
gigantic heads, which four men apiece can hardly carry. 

The second great episode of the poem is Beowulf s fight 
with the Dragon of the Gold-hoard. Beowulf has been 
reigning as king for fifty years and is now an 
and the old man, when calamity comes upon him and 

Fire dragon. ^. g p e0 pj e j n s h a p e 0 f a monster of the 

serpent-kind, which flies by night enveloped in fire ; and 
which, in revenge for the theft of a gold cup from its pre- 
cious hoard, burns the king’s hall. Old as he is, Beowulf 
fights the dragon single-handed. He slays the monster in 
its lair, but himself receives his mortal hurt. 

The death of the old king is picturesque and touching. 
He bids his thane bring out from the dragon’s den “the 
Death of Beo- gold-treasure, the jewels, the curious gems,” in 
wiiif. order that death may be softer to him, seeing 

the wealth he has gained for his people. Wiglaf, entering 
the cave of the “ old twilight-flier,” sees “ dishes stand- 
ing, vessels of men of yore, footless, their ornaments fallen 
away ; there was many a helm old and rusty, and many 
armlets cunningly fastened,” and over the hoard droops a 
magic banner, “all golden, locked by arts of song,” from 
which a light is shed over the treasure. Beowulf gazes 
with dying eyes upon the precious things ; then he asks 


THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 


9 


that his thanes build for him a funeral barrow on a prom- 
ontory of the sea, which the sailors, as they “ drive their 
foaming barks from afar over the mists of floods, may see 
and name Beowulf’s Mount.” 

Besides Beowulf, and the short poems Widsith and Deors 
Lament , mentioned above, two other pieces remain to us 
from the pagan period of Anglo-Saxon poetry.* They are 
both fragments. One, the Fight at Fmnshurg, full of 
savage vigor, throws light upon an obscure story referred 
to in Beowulf ; the other, Waldhere , is connected with 
the old German cycle of poems which were brought to- 
gether many centuries later as the Niebelungen Lied. 

When we look at this early literature as a whole we can- 
not fail to be struck by its grimness. It has, to be sure, 
genial moments, moments even of tenderness, summary of 
but for the most part the darker aspects of nat- Early Poetry - 
ure, storm and hail and mist, the wintry terror of the 
sea, are what the poet loves to dwell upon ; and over the 
fierce martial life which he depicts there hangs a cloud of 
grim fatalism, the shadow of Wyrd, or Fate, huge and in- 
escapable. The great business of life is war ; from it pro- 
ceeds all honor and dignity. To be faithful and liberal to 
his friends and deadly to his foes, that is the whole duty 
of a man. But a time was at hand when these fierce wor- 
shippers of Thor and Woden were to hear a new gospel. 
Sweeping southwestward in their viking ships, they were to 
conquer a new home for themselves in Britain ; and there 
to be themselves conquered, not by arms, but by bands of 
eager monks who came from the seat of the Church in 
Rome and from Christianized Ireland, preaching peace 
and goodwill. 

* It must be remembered that Beowulf is tinged with Christian color- 
ing, given to it, no doubt, by the English monks who transcribed the 
manuscript. Still, ir, general tone it is pagan, and in origin continental. 


10 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


While the literature we have just described was beginning 
to take form in the motherland of the Anglo-Saxon people, 
England be- their future island-home was being made into a 
Anglo-Saxon province of the Roman Empire. The very earli- 
invasions. es t inhabitants of Britain, that mysterious race 
which may have raised the huge circle of monoliths at 
Stonehenge, had given way — how early we do not know 
— to a Celtic-speaking people. Before the Roman con- 
quest this people spread over France, Spain, and all the 
British islands. The Celts were of an impetuous character, 
imaginative, curious, and quick to learn. The Roman 
historians tell us of their eagerness for news, of their de- 
light in clever speech and quick retort. Their early liter- 
ature shows a delicate fancy, a kind of wild grace and a 
love of beauty for its own sake, strikingly in contrast with 
the stern poetry of the Anglo-Saxon sc6p. But this very 
quickness of sympathy and of intelligence proved fatal to 
their national existence. When the Roman legions crossed 
from Gaul there was a short space of fierce resistance, and 
then the Celts accepted, from curiosity as much as from 
compulsion, the imposing Roman civilization. Some of 
the more stubborn fled to the fastnesses of Wales and 
Scotland, and there continued even to our own day their 
Celtic traditions ; but the greater part seem to have sub- 
mitted to the Roman, as if by a kind of fascination, even 
giving up their language to learn that of their conquerors. 
The Romans, like the English of our own day, carried 
wherever they went their splendid but somewhat rigid civ- 
ilization, and by the end of the fourth century England 
was dotted with towns and villas where, amid pillared por- 
ticoes, mosaic pavements, marble baths, forums and hip- 
podromes, a Roman emperor could find himself at home. 

This was the state of England when there began that 
remarkable series of movements on the part of the wild 


THE AHGLO-SAXOH PERIOD 


11 


Germanic tribes, which we know as the “ migration/* 
About the end of the fourth century, urged by a common 
impulse, tribe after tribe swept southward ; some by sea, to 
harry the coasts of Gaul and Britain, some over the Alps 
and the Pyrenees, to batter at the gates of Rome, to plunder 
the rich islands of the Mediterranean, and to found a king- 
dom in Africa. The Roman legions were recalled from 
Britain to guard the imperial city, and the Celtic ^ ^ ^ 
inhabitants, weakened by three centuries of civil- Saxon inva- 
ized life, were left to struggle unaided against 
the pirate bands of J utes, Saxons, and Angles, which ap- 
peared every spring in increasing numbers upon their coast. 
The Celts did not yield to these savage invaders so readily 
as they had done to the polished Romans. From the time 
when the first band of Jutes landed on the isle of Thanet 
to the time when the invaders had subjugated the island 
and set up the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, a century and a 
half elapsed, during which all the monuments which Rome 
had left were ruined if not obliterated. During these 
years of struggle there began to grow up, about the person 
of an obscure Celtic leader, that cycle of stories which was 
to prove so fruitful of poetry both in France and England, 
— the legends of Arthur, founder of the Round Table, 
and defender of the western Britons against the weakening 
power of Rome and the growing fury of the barbarians. 
Many Celts fled, as in the times of the Roman invasion, 
into Wales and Scotland ; many were killed; but a great 
number were undoubtedly absorbed by the invading race. 
They communicated to that race its first leaven ; they 
made it more sensitive and receptive, and gave it a touch 
of extravagance and gayety, which, after being reinforced 
by similar elements in the temperament of the Norman- 
French invaders, was to blossom in the sweet humor of 
Chaucer, in the rich fancy of Spenser, and in the broad hu- 
manity of Shakespeare. But this effect was not to be man- 
ifest for a long tijne to come. The literature which arose 


12 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


in England after the Saxon conquest, shows little trace of 
it. The immediate influence was a religious one, and the 
poetry we shall now consider is nearly all deeply colored 
with religious thought and feeling. 

The Christian teaching came into England in two differ- 
ent streams, one from Rome, one from Ireland, which 
country had been won from heathenism several 
tianizingof centuries before. The first stream began late 
England. * n sixth century, with the coming of Au- 
gustine. Little by little, after the advent of this great 
missionary among the Saxons in the south of England, the 
new creed drove out the old, winning its way by virtue 
of its greater ideality, and the authority with which it 
spoke of man's existence beyond the grave. This stream 
of religious influence which came from Rome, centred 
chiefly in south and central England, in the kingdom of 
Wessex. It produced some schools of learning, but almost 
no literature. It is to the north and east, to the king- 
dom of Northumbria, which felt the influence of the Irish 
monks, that we must look for the first blossomings of 
Christian poetry in England. 

Of all the monasteries which sprang up in Northumbria, 
in the train of the Celtic missionaries from Ireland, two 
are most famous because of their connection with litera- 
ture — J arrow and Whitby. At Jarrow lived and died 
Baeda, known as the “ Venerable Bede," a gen- 
tle, laborious scholar in whom all the learning 
of Northumbria was summed up. He wrote many books, 
nearly all in Latin, the most notable being the Ecclesias- 
tical History of the English People (Historia Ecclesiastica 
Gentis Anglorum). It is from a passage in this book that 
we know the story of Caedmon, a cowherd of 
Whitby, the first poet of Christian England. 
Bede tells us that when the inmates of the monastery were 
gathered together at the evening feast, and the harp was 
passed round for each to sing in turn, Caedmon would rise 


Bede. 


Caedmon. 


THE ANGLO-SAXOX PERIOD 


13 


and depart, for he was an unlettered man and knew noth- 
ing of the gleeman's art. So it was for many years, until 
he was no longer young. One night, when he had thus left 
the cheerful company and gone to the stables to tend the 
cattle, he fell asleep and had a wonderful dream. The 
shining figure of the Lord appeared before him, saying, 
“ Caedmon, sing to me.” Caedmon answered, “ Behold, I 
know not how to sing, and therefore 1 left the feast to- 
night.” “ Still, sifig now to me,” the Lord said. “ What 
then shall I sing?” asked Caedmon. “Sing the begin- 
ning of created things,” was the answer. Then in his dream 
Caedmon framed some verses of the Creation, which in the 
morning he wrote down, adding others to them. News of 
the wonderful gift which had been vouchsafed to the un- 
schooled man was carried to Hild, the abbess of the founda- 
tion, and she commanded portions of the Scripture to be 
read to him, that he might paraphrase them into verse. 
So it was done ; and from this ti me on Caedmon's life 
was given to his heaven-appointed task of turning the Old 
Testament narrative into song. 

The poems which have come down to us under Caed- 
mon's name * consist of paraphrases of Genesis, of Exodus, 
and a part of Daniel. An interesting fragment called 
Judith is sometimes included in the work of the “ school 
of Caedmon.” In places, especially in dealing with a war- 
like episode, the poet expands his matter freely, stamping 
it with the impress of his own mind. In Exodus, for 
instance, all the interest is centred on the overwhelming 
of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea. The Egyptian and the 
Israelitish armies are described with a heathen scop's de- 
light in the pomp and circumstance of war, and the disas- 
ter which overtakes the Egyptian hosts is sung with savage 
force and zest. In Judith the pagan delight in battle and 
in blood-revenge is even more marked. First, king Holo- 

* The pieces traditionally ascribed to Caedmon are for the most part 
not accepted by modern scholarship as his work. 


14 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


femes is shown, like a rude viking, boisterous and wassail- 
ing in his mead-hall. When Judith comes to him in his 
drunken sleep and hews off his head with a sword, the 
poet cannot restrain his exultation ; and the flight of the 
army of Holofernes before the men of Israel is described 
with grewsome vividness. 

If we know little of Caedmon’s life, we know still less of 
Cynewulf, the poet who succeeded him, and who was prob- 
ably the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poets, if 

Cynewulf. J ® . , , to , £ 

we except the unknown bard who gave Beowulf 

its present form. Out of very insubstantial materials a 
picturesque story has been made for him. He is said to 
have been in his youth a wandering singer, leading a wild 
life by sea and shore, as he plied his gleeman’s craft, now in 
the halls of aethelings, now in the huts of shepherds and 
on the village green, now on the deck of Northumbrian 
coasting-ships. In the midst of this free existence he sud- 
denly underwent some deep religious experience, which, 
together with the public disasters then overtaking Nor- 
thumbria, completely changed the temper of his mind. 
He gave up the half-pagan nature-poetry which up to this 
time he had written, and turned to write religious poems. 
We have, signed with his name in runes, two lives of 
saints, and an epic dealing with Christ’s incarnation and 
ascension, and with the Day of Judgment. Other poems 
have been ascribed to him with varying degrees of probabil- 
ity : Andreas , a very lively and naive story of a saint’s 
martyrdom and final triumph over his enemies ; the Phoe- 
nix, a richly colored description of the mythic bird and its 
dwelling-place, with a religious interpretation ; and finally 
a number of Riddles, very curious composition^, some of 
which are full of fine imagination and fresh observation of 
nature. 

These last are nothing more nor less than conundrums, 
in which some object or phenomenon is described suggest- 
ively, and the reader is left to guess the meaning. In the 


THI ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 


15 


hands of a mere versifier this would be the dreariest 
of forms, but Cynewulf (or whoever is indeed the author) 
not seldom enters with so much sympathy and The 
dramatic imagination into the life of the thing Riddles, 
described, that he lifts the subject into poetry. The new 
moon is a young viking, sailing through the skies in his 
pirate ship, laden with spoils of battle, to build a burg for 
himself in highest Heaven ; but the sun, a greater warrior, 
drives him away and seizes his land, until the night con- 
quers the sun in turn. The iceberg shouts and laughs as 
it plunges through the wintry sea, eager to crush the fleet 
of hostile ships. The sword in its scabbard is a mailed 
fighter, who goes exultingly into the battle-play, and then 
is sad because women upbraid him for the slaughter he has 
done. The swan and the beaver are described with an in- 
sight and sympathy which reminds us, in a far-off way, of 
Wordsworth and the modern nature-poets. Altogether 
these riddles are remarkable compositions, and it is pleas- 
ant, even if not quite scientific, to think of them as the 
youthful work of Cynewulf, since his is the only poet’s 
name that has survived from those obscure and troubled 
times. 

The Phoenix * derives a special interest from the fact 
that it is the only Anglo-Saxon poem of any length which 
shows a delight in the soft and radiant moods of 
Nature, as opposed to her fierce and grim as- 
pects. In the land where the Phoenix dwells “ the groves 
are all behung with blossoms . . . the boughs upon 

the trees are ever laden, the fruit is aye renewed through 
all eternity.” f The music of the wonderful bird, as it 
goes aloft “ to meet that gladsome gem, God’s candle,” is 
“ sweeter and more beauteous than any craft of song.” 


The 

Phoenix. 


* The Phoenix and many of the Riddles are based upon Latin orig- 
inals. 

f The quotations from the Phoenix are from Gollancz’s translation, 
Exeter Book, Early English Text Society’s publications, 1895. 


16 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

When the thousand years of its life are done, it flies far 
away to a lonely Syrian wood, builds its own holocaust of 
fragrant herbs, which the Sun kindles. Out of the ball of 
ashes a new Phoenix is born, “ richly dight with plumage, 
as it was at first, radiantly adorned, ” and flies back to 
its home in the enchanted land of summer. At the end, 
the whole poem is made into a Christian allegory of the 
death and resurrection of Christ, and of his ascent to heaven 
amid the ministering company of saints. The poem has a 
fervor and enthusiasm lacking to the Latin original, and 
whether we may or may not ascribe it to Cynewulf, it is the 
work of a good poet. Scholars have pointed out that the 
description of the bird's dwelling-place is influenced by the 
old Celtic fancy of the Land of Eternal Youth ; and cer- 
tainly it is not difficult to see, in the bright colors and 
happy fancy of the poem, the working of the Celtic imagi- 
nation, as well as the transforming touch of hope which 
had been brought into men's lives by Christianity. 

Besides the poetry attributed to Caedmon and his school, 
and to Cynewulf and his school, there exist a few short 
Short Poems poems, lyrics, or “ dramatic lyrics,” of the great- 
of sentiment. es ^ interest. One of these, called “ The Wife's 
Lament,” gives us a glimpse of one of the harsh customs of 
our ancestors. A wife, accused of faithlessness, has been 
banished from her native village, and compelled to live 
alone in the forest ; from her place of exile she pours out 
a moan to the husband who has been estranged from her 
by false slanderers. “ The Lover's Message " is a kind of 
companion piece to this. The speaker in the little poem 
is the tablet of wood upon which an absent lover has 
carved a message to send to his beloved. It tells her that 
he has now 'a home for her in the south, and bids her, as 
soon as she hears the cuckoo chanting of his sorrow in the 
copse wood, to take sail over the ocean pathway to her lord, 
who waits and longs for her. With these two little poems 
begins the love- poetry of England. 


THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 


17 


The longest and most perfect in form of these half-lyrical 
elegies or poems of sentiment, is “ The Wanderer.” It is 
the complaint of one who must “ traverse the watery ways, 
stir with his hands the rime-cold sea, and tread the paths 
of exile,” while he muses upon the joys and glories of a 
life that has passed away forever. “ Often,” he says, “it 
seems to him in fancy as though he clasps and kisses his 
great lord, and on his knees lays hand and head, even as 
erewhile ; ” but he soon wakes friendless, and sees before 
him only “ the fallow ways, sea-birds bathing and spreading 
their wings, falling hoar-frost and snow mingled with hail.” 
Bapt away again by his longing, he beholds his friends and 
kinsmen hovering before him in the air ; he “greets them 
with snatches of song, he scans them eagerly, comrades of 
heroes ; soon they swim away again ; the sailor-souls do 
not bring hither many old familiar songs.”* And at 
the close the Wanderer breaks out into a song of lamenta- 
tion over the departed glories of a better time : “ Where is 
gone the horse ? Where is gone the hero ? Where is gone 
the giver of treasure ? Where are gone the seats of the 
feast ? Where are the joys of the hall ? Ah, thou bright 
cup ! Ah, thou mailed warrior ! Ah, the prince’s pride ! 
how has the time passed away . . as if it had not 

been ! ” There is a wistful tenderness and a lyric grace in 
this poem which suggests once more the Celtic leaven at 
work in the ruder Anglo-Saxon genius. It suggests, too, 
a state of society fallen into ruin, a time of decadence and 
disaster. Probably, before it was written, such a time had 
come for England, and especially for Northumbria. 

While the Anglo-Saxons had been settling down in 
England to a life of agriculture, their kinsmen who re- 
mained on the Continent had continued to lead T he Danish 
their wild free-booting life of the sea. Toward Invasl <> ns - 
the end of the eighth century bands of Danes began to 
harass the English coasts. Northumbria bore the main 
* Gollancz’s translation of Exeter Book. 


18 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

force of their attacks. The very monastery of J arrow, in 
which Baeda had written his Ecclesiastical History, was 
plundered, and its inhabitants put to the sword. The mon- 
astery of Whitby, where Caedmon had had his vision, was 
only temporarily saved by the fierce resistance of the monks. 
By the middle of the ninth century the Danes had made 
themselves masters of Northumbria. They were such men 
as the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons had been three hundred 
years before — worshippers of the old gods, ruthless uproot- 
ers of a religion, literature, and society which they did not 
understand. In Wessex, the heroism of King Alfred 
turned back the tide of barbarian invasion ; and from this 
time until the Norman conquest, two centuries later, the 
only literature which remains to us was produced in Wes- 
sex. It is almost entirely a literature of prose ; the best 
of it was the work of King Alfred himself, or produced 
under his immediate encouragement. 

As a child King Alfred had seen Rome, and had lived 
for a time at the great court of Charles the Bald in France ; 
Kin Alfred an( ^ ^ ie s P ec ^ ac ^ e ^ iese older and richer civil- 
izations had filled him with a desire to give to 
his rude subjects something of the heritage of the past. 
When, after a desperate struggle, he had won peace from 
the Danes, he called about him learned monks from the 
sheltered monasteries of Ireland and Wales, and made wel- 
come at his court all strangers who could bring him a 
manuscript or sing to him an old song. It was probably 
during his reign that the poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf, 
as well as the older pagan poems, were brought southward 
out of Northumbria and put in the West-Saxon form in 
which we now have them. He spurred on his priests and 
bishops to write. He himself learned a little Latin, in 
order that he might translate certain books which he 
deemed would be most useful and interesting to English- 
men, into the West-Saxon tongue ; putting down the sense, 
he says, “ sometimes word for word, sometimes meaning for 


TIIE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 


19 


meaning, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my archbishop, 
and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbald, my mass-priest, and 
John, my mass-priest/’ He selected for translation a philo- 
sophical work, the Consolations of Philosophy of Boethius ; a 
manual of history and geography by Orosius ; and a religious 
treatise, the Pastoral Care or “ Shepherd's Book "of Greg- 
ory, copies of which he sent to all his bishops in order that 
they might learn to be better shepherds of their flocks. More 
important still, he translated Baeda's Ecclesiastical His- 
tory, thus giving a native English dress to the first great piece 
of historical writing which had been done in England. Last- 
ly, he caused the dry entries of the deaths of kings and the 
installations of bishops, which the monks were in the habit 
of making on the Easter rolls, to be expanded into a clear 
and picturesque narrative, the greatest space, of course, 
being taken up with the events of his own reign. This, 
known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is the oldest monu- 
ment of English prose,* and is, with one exception, the most 
venerable piece of extended prose writing in Europe. 

Despite all his efforts, however. King Alfred did not 
succeed in creating anything like a vital native literature 
in Wessex. The language was changing, and 
the literary spirit of the people was almost Anglo-Saxon 
dead. The sermons or Homilies of the great 
and devoted Aelfric, however, here and there rise to the 
rank of literature, by reason of the naive picturesqueness 
of some religious legend which they treat, or by the fervor 
of their piety. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, also, which 
continued to grow in the monasteries of Peterborough, 
Winchester, and Ely, here and there breaks out into stir- 
ring verse. One of these poetic episodes is known as the 
Battle of Brunanburh , and is entered under the year 937. 

* Here, and earlier in this chapter, the word English is used loosely, 
to cover the productions of the Anglo-Saxon period. Strictly speaking, 
English literature did not begin until a century and a half after the 
Norman conquest. 


20 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Another, the Death of Byrhtnoth, also called the Battle of 
Maldon, bears date 991 ; it is the swan-song of Anglo- 
Saxon poetry. 

The truth is that England at the end of the tenth cen- 
tury was in need of new blood. The Anglo-Saxon genius, 
with all its rugged grandeur and fine persistence, was 
lacking in many elements necessary to make a great 
national life ; and Anglo-Saxon poetry, looked at in the 
large, betrays a narrowness of theme and monotony of 
tone, out of which a great literature could have evolved, if 
at all, only slowly and with difficulty. Some new graft was 
needed, to give elasticity, gayety, and range ; and this 
need was met when, in 1066, William the Conqueror landed 
at Hastings with his army of Norman-French knights, and 
marched to give battle to the forces of Harold, the last of 
the Saxon kings. 


CHAPTER II 


THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD 

The Normans, or North-men, were an extraordinary 
people. A century and a half before their invasion of 
England, they had appeared off the coast of TheNor _ 

France ; and under their leader, Hrolf the mans * 

Ganger (the “ Walker "), they had pushed up the Seine in 
their black boats, wasting and burning to the very gates of 
Paris. The Fretich won peace by giving over to them 
broad and rich lands in the northwest, known henceforth 
as Normandy. Unlike the other northern peoples, they 
showed a marvellous power of assimilating the southern 
civilization. They married with the French women, 
adopted French manners and the French tongue. In a 
little over a century they had grown from a barbarous 
horde of sea-robbers into the most polished and brilliant 
people of Europe, whose power was felt in the Mediterra- 
nean and the far East. They united in a singular manner 
impetuous daring and cool practical sense. Without losing 
anything of their northern bravery in war, they managed 
to gather up all the southern suppleness and wit, all the 
southern love of splendor and art. When William advanced 
to meet King Harold at Hastings, a court minstrel, Taille- 
fer, rode before the invading army, tossing up his sword 
and catching it like a juggler, while he chanted the Song of 
Roland. He is a symbol of the Norman spirit, of its dash, 
its buoyancy, its imaginative brilliancy. The Normans 
brought with them to England not only the terror of the 
sword and the strong hand of conquest, but also the vitaliz- 
ing breath of song, the fresh and youthful spirit of romance. 

21 


22 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


No one . among the conquered people, however, could 
then have foreseen that the invasion was to prove the great- 
est of national blessings ; for the sternness and 
Norman°in- e energy with which the Norman king and his 
vasion * nobles set about planting their own civilization 
in the island, brought with it much oppression and hard- 
ship. Over the length and breadth of England rose those 
strong castles whose gray and massive walls still frown over 
the pleasant English landscape. Less forbidding than 
these, but no less suggestive of the foreigner, splendid 
minsters gradually took the place of the gloomy little Sax- 
on churches. Forest laws of terrible harshness preserved 
the “ tall deer ” which the king “ loved as his life but 
when a man was found murdered, if it could be proved that 
he was a Saxon, no further notice was taken of the crime. 
The Saxon language, or “ Englisc,” as it had begun to be 
called in King Alfred’s time, was the badge of serfdom ; 
and not only in the court and camp and castle, but also in 
Parliament and on the justice-bench, French alone was 
spoken. With the one exception of the Anglo-Saxon Chron- 
icle, which was still continued, English “ dives under- 
ground ” in 1066, and does not reappear for a century and a 
half. If a prophet had arisen to tell the Norman nobility 
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that not French, but 
English, was destined to be the speech of their descendants, 
he would have been laughed at. But this incredible thing 
was to be, because of the dogged persistency of the Anglo- 
Saxon nature in clinging to its own. Though no longer 
written, the old tongue lived on the lips of the subjugated 
race, from father to son. About 1200 it began to be used 
again as a language of books, disputing with rude and un- 
certain accents a place by the side of the polished language 
of the conquerors. When it reappeared, however, it was a 
changed tongue. It was no longer Anglo-Saxon, but Eng- 
lish. In spite of many words now obsolete, many strange 
forms and spellings, the English of the early thirteenth 


THE KORMAK-FREHCH PERIOD 


23 


century is indubitably the same language which we speak 
to-day. It had sloughed off its inflections, simplified its 
grammar, and required only to be enriched by French 
elements, and made flexible by use, to be ready for the 
hand of Chaucer. 

But to say that English was “ enriched by French ele- 
ments ” is hardly to convey an idea of the extent to which 
the foreign tongue entered into the composi- The Making 
tion of the language. What really happened ofEn s lish - 
was that English absorbed nearly the whole body of the 
French speech, or rather that the two languages gradually 
melted together and became one. The Saxon, however, 
continued as the marrow and bony structure of the whole. 
The words of French origin in our vocabulary outnumber 
the Saxon words three to one ; but in ordinary speech, 
where only the common words of daily life and action are 
used, the Saxon words are greatly in preponderance. The 
result of this fusion was to increase enormously the power 
of the language to express thought and feeling. It has 
made English the most splendid poetic language of the 
world, with the possible exception of the Greek alone. The 
fusion was accomplished in a period of about a century and 
a half. When English first appeared, in 1200, after its 
long sleep, it contained almost no French ingredients ; by 
the middle of the fourteenth century the process of blend- 
ing the two tongues was beginning to draw to a close. 
Chaucer, the poet who was to complete it and fix the 
language in much the shape that it wears to-day, was then 
a boy in the streets of London. 

The literature of this century and a half of preparation 
is of deep interest from the historical point of view, and 
has not a little intrinsic charm. A large pro- The Metrical 
portion of it consists of efforts in a new and Romances - 
fascinating poetic form introduced into England by the 
Norman-French, the metrical romance. The typical ro- 
mance was a rambling tale of adventure, in which evil 


24 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


knights, robbers, giants, Saracens, and other inimical 
personages, were overthrown by a wandering chevalier, in 
the interest of some distressed damsel or of holy church. 

It dealt in a rather desultory and unreal, but highly enter- 
taining way, with the three great interests of the Middle 
Ages, — knightly prowess, chivalric love, and religion. It ! 
gave scope, in the description of feasts and tournaments, of 
armor, dress, and hunting equipage, for the mediaeval love 
of pageantry and gay. color ; it ministered to the mediaeval 
craving after the supernatural, the extravagant, and the 
thrilling ; above all, it afforded an outlet to the sentiment 
of woman-worship, which, taking its rise in the cult of the j 
Virgin Mary, had then been secularized by the poets of 
Provence, and become a vital part of the great creed of 
feudal chivalry. 

* The trouveres, as the poets who composed and recited 
these romances were called, borrowed the material of their j 
Their richly variegated tales wherever they could find 

sources. it. A part of it came from Italy and the East, 
and out of this they made the Troy cycle and the cycle of ] 
Alexander the Great. A part of it they found near at I 
hand, in the adventures of Charlemagne and his twelve ] 
peers. But the richest store-house of romance which they j 
had to draw upon, was in the Celtic parts of England and 
Brittany, where for generations, probably for centuries, 
there had been growing up a mass of legend connected with 
King Arthur. A number of these Arthurian legends were j 
gathered up, before the middle of the twelfth century, in a 
great Latin work called the Historia Bretonum, by Geof- j 
frey of Monmouth, a Welsh writer, who also added sto- ' 
ries of his own invention. This rather bare chronicle of 
Geoffrey’s was seized upon by the trouveres , and out of it 
began to branch all manner of romantic episode. The book 
was translated into French verse by Wace of Jersey, and 
through this channel came, about the year 1200, into the 
hands of Layamon, the first writer of romance in the crude 


THE HORMAH-FREHCH PERIOD 


25 


English speech which was just then awaking from its cen- 
tury and a half of silence. 

All that we know of Layamon, and of how he came to 
write his Brut , he tells himself in the quaint Layamon’s 
and touching words with which the poem opens : “ Brut ” 

“ There was a priest in the land was named Layamon ; 
he was son of Leovenath, — may God be gracious to him ! 
He dwelt at Ernley, at a noble church upon Severn bank. 
. . It came to him in mind and in his chief thought 

that he would tell the noble deeds of the English ; what 
the men were named, and whence they came, who first had 
the English land after the flood. . . Layamon began 

to journey wide over this land, and procured the noble 
books which he took for authority. He took the English 
book that Saint Bede made ; * another he took in Latin, 
that Saint Albin made and the fair Austinf . . ; the 

third book he took . . that a French clerk made, 
named Wace. . . Layamon laid these books before 
him and turned over the leaves ; lovingly he beheld them — 
may the Lord be merciful to him ! Pen he took with 
fingers, and wrote on book-skin, and compressed the three 
books into one.” 

The poem opens with an account of how “ Eneas the 
duke,” after the destruction of Troy, flees into Italy, and 
builds him a “ great burg.” After many years his great- 
grandson, Brutus, sets out with all his people to find a new 
land in the west. They pass the Pillars of Hercules, “tall 
posts of strong marble stone,” where they find the mer- 
maidens, “ beasts of great deceit, and so sweet that many 
men are not able to quit them.” After further adventures 
in Spain and France, they come at length to the shores of 
England, and land “at Dartmouth in Totnes.” The 
poem has now run on for two thousand lines, and the story 

* The Anglo-Saxon version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. 

\ Probably the original Latin version of Bede, the authorship bping 
mistaken by Layamon. 


26 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


has just begun. But leisurely as Layamon is, he is seldom 
tedious ; the story lures one on from page to page, until one 
forgets or pardons the enormous length. In treating the 
Arthur legends, Layamon is not content merely to tran- 
scribe his predecessors. His home was near the borders of 
Wales, where these legends were native ; and he either 
gathered up or freely invented several additions of the 
utmost importance. The most notable of these are his 
story of the founding of the Round Table, and his account 
of the fays who are present at Arthurs birth and who carry 
him after his last battle to the mystic isle of Avalon. 

After Layamon had shown the way to romance writing in 
the native tongue, other poets in rapidly increasing num- 
bers followed in his footsteps. Rude at first, 

English Imi- . in- n 

tations of their efforts gradually approached, m ease and 
French grace, those of their Norman-French teachers, 
Romances. though never quite rivalling the limpid irouvere 
verse. Almost all the English romances of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries are free renderings from French 
originals. This is true not only of those which deal with con- 
tinental heroes, like Charlemagne and Alexander, or which 
tell a tale of continental origin, like Amis and Amiloun 
and Floris and Blanchefiour ; but also of the Arthur 
stories, whose source was British, and even of the stories 
of purely English heroes, Bevis of Hampton , and Guy of 
Warwick. The raw material had to be refined by the cun- 
ning Norman-French' artisans before the less skilled work- 
ers in the English tongue could handle it. But of all the 
Arthurian romances in English of this period, such as Sir 
Tristrem , Arthour and Merlin , Morte d’ Arthur e, and The 
Awentyres (adventures) of Arthur at the Tarn Wathelmg 
(Tarn Wadling in Cumberland), the one which is of most 
genuine native English workmanship is the best of all, and 
is one of the most charming romances of the world. This 
is Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight . Its date is about 
1320-1330. 


THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD 


27 


When the poem opens. King Arthur and his court are 
gathered in the hail at Camelot to celebrate the feast of the 
New Year. The king, “so busied him his 
young blood and his wild brain,” will not eat anVtheGreen 
until some adventure has befallen. As the first Kmght * 
course comes in “ with cracking of trumpets,” and the 
“ noise of nakers (drums), with noble pipes,” there suddenly 
rushes in at the hall door a gigantic knight, clothed entirely 
in green, mounted on a green foal, and bearing in one hand 
a holly bough, in the other a great axe. He rides to the 
dais, and challenges any knight to give him a blow with his 
axe, and to abide one in turn. Gawayne, the king’s nephew, 
smites off the head of the Green Knight, who quietly picks 
it up by the hair, and holds it out toward Gawayne, until 
the lips speak, giving him rendezvous at the Green Chapel 
on the next New Year’s day. 

On All-hallow’s day, Gawayne sets out upon his horse 
Gringolet, and journeys through North Wales, past Holy- 
head into the wilderness of Wirral ; “sometimes with 
worms (serpents) he wars, with wolves and bears,” with 
giants and wood-satyrs, until at last on Christmas-eve he 
comes to a great forest of hoar oaks. He calls upon Mary, 
“mildest mother so dear,” to help him. Immediately he 
sees a fair castle standing on a hill ; and asking shelter, he 
is courteously received by the lord of the castle and his fair 
young wife, and is assured that the Green Chapel is near 
at hand. 

After the Christmas festivities are over, his host prepares 
for a great hunt, to last three days ; and a jesting compact 
is made between them that at the end of each day they shall 
give each other whatever good thing they have won. While 
her lord is absent on the hunt, the lady of .the castle tries in 
vain to induce Gawayne to make love to her, and bestows 
upon him a kiss. Anxious to fulfil his compact, he in 
turn gives the kiss to her lord each night when the hunt 
is over, and receives as a counter-gift the spoils of the 


28 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


chase. At their last meeting the lady persuades Gawayne to 
take as a gift a green lace belt which will protect him from 
mortal harm. Thinking it “ a jewel for the jeopardy ” that 
he is to run at the Green Chapel, he keeps the gift a secret, 
and thus proves false to his compact. 

On New Year’s morning he sets out through a storm of 
snow, past forests and cliffs, where “ each hill had a hat ! 
and a mist-cloak,” to find the Green Chapel. It proves to i 
be a grass-covered hollow mound, in a desert valley, “ the I 
most cursed kirk,” says Gawayne, “ that ever I came in.” ] 
The Green Knight appears, and deals a blow with his axe ■ 
upon Gawayne’s bent neck. But he only pierces the skin, 
and Gawayne, seeing the blood fall on the snow, claps on 
his helmet, draws his sword, and declares the compact 
fulfilled. The Green Knight then discloses the fact that j 
he is the lord of the castle where Gawayne has just been 
entertained, that with, him dwells the fairy- woman Mor- 
gain, who, because of her hatred of Guinevere, has sent him 
to frighten her at Christmas feast with the sight of a severed 
head talking, and who has been trying to lead Gawayne 
into bad faith and untruthfulness, in order that her hus- 
band’s axe may have power upon him. By his purity and 
truth Gawayne has been saved, except for the slight wound 
as punishment for concealing the gift of the girdle. Ga- 
wayne swears to wear the “ lovelace ” in remembrance of his 
weakness ; and ever afterward each knight of the Round 
Table, and every lady of Arthur’s court, wears a bright 
green belt for Gawayne’s sake. 

The picturesque and nervous language of the poem, 
its bright humor and fancy, and the vivid beauty of its i 
descriptions, combine with its moral sweetness to make 
this the most delightful blossom of all pre-Chaucerian 
romance. Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight contains fair 
promise not only of Chaucer’s Knight's Tale, but even of 
Spenser’s Faerie Queene. 

While the shimmering tapestry and cloth of gold of 


THE NORMAN-FREHCH PERIOD 


29 


these bright romances was being woven to beguile the 
tedium of castle halls, a more sombre literary fabric grew 
under the patient hands of monks and relig- Religious 
ious enthusiasts. The Cursor Mundi, the au- -°cS r the 
thor of which is unknown, deserves particular Mundi ” 
comment. Though religious in aim and in matter, it 
shows a wholesome secular desire to be entertaining. The 
author/ in beginning, laments the absorption of the readers 
of his day in frivolous romance, and proposes to give them 
in place of these vain tales of earthly love, a tale of divine 
love which shall be equally thrilling. He then proceeds to 
tell in flowing verse the story of God's dealings with man, 
from the Creation to the final redemption, following in gen- 
eral the biblical narrative, but adorning it with popular le- 
gends, both sacred and secular, and with all manner of quaint 
digressions. The ambition of the author has really been 
accomplished ; his book is indeed a “ religious romance," 
and must have been a respectable rival of its more worldly 
brothers, in catching the ear of such readers as were will- 
ing to be edified at the same time that they were enter- 
tained. 

Of another religious writer whose work rises to the dig- 
nity of literature, the name and story have fortunately 
been preserved. This is Kichard Rolle, the Richard Rone 
hermit of Hampole in southern Yorkshire, who of Ham P° le - 
was born about 1300 and died in 1349. In his youth he 
went to Oxford, then at the height of its fame as a centre 
of scholastic learning ; but the mysticism and erratic ardor 
of his nature made him soon revolt against the dry intellect- 
uality of the scholastic teaching. He left college, made him 
a hermit's shroud out of two of his sister's gowns and his 
father's hood, and began the life of a religious solitary and 
mystic. His cell at Hampole, near a Cistercian nunnery, 
was after his death visited as a miracle-working shrine, and 
cared for by the nuns. He wrote many canticles of divine 
love, some of which are of unusual intensity. His longest 


30 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


work is the Priche of Conscience, which deals with the life 
of man and the terrors of the Last Judgment. 

But of all the religious writings of this period, by far the 
most beautiful are two poems, one lyric, the other narra- 
The “Love five, which approach the subject of divine love 
?homas° f from the personal side, and treat it with an inti- 
de Hales. mate personal pathos. The first is the famous 

“ Love Rune” of Thomas de Hales, a monk of thfe Minor 
Friars. He tells us in the first stanza that he was besought 
by a maid of Christ to make her a love-song, in order 
that she might learn therefrom how to choose a worthy 
and faithful lover. The monkish poet consents, but goes 
on to tell her how false and fleeting is all worldly love ; how 
all earthly lovers vanish and are forgotten. 


Hwer is Paris and Heleyne 

That weren so bryght and fey re on ble ? 

Amadas, Tristram, and Dideyne, 

Yseude, and alle the ? 

Ector, with his scharpg meyne, 

And Cesar rich of world 6s fee ? 

Hes beoth iglyden ut of the reyne, 

So the scheft is of the clee. 


(Where is Paris and Helen, that were so bright and fair of 
countenance ? Amadas, Tristram, Dido, Iseult and all those ? 
Hector with his sharp strength, and Caesar rich with the 
world’s fee [wealth] ? They be glided out of the realm, as the 
shaft is from the clew [bow-string]. 

“ But there is another lover,” the poet continues, who is 
“ richer than Henry our King, and whose dwelling is fairer 
than Solomon’s house of jasper and sapphire. Choose Him, 
and may Cod bring thee to His bride-chamber in Heaven.” 
The poem is well-nigh perfect in form, and for rich and 
tender melody bears comparison with the best lyrical work 
of Shakespeare’s age. It shines out like a gem from the 
mass of ruder song about it. 


THE NORMA^-EREJICH PERIOD 


31 


The other religious poem, which deserves to be classed 
with this by reason of its beauty and humanity, is much 
longer. It is called The Pearl. A father falls <<The 
asleep on the grave of his lost daughter, whose Pearl.” 
name seems to have been Margaret (i.e., “ the pearl ”). 
In a vision he sees her, and beholds the celestial coun- 
try where she dwells. He dreams that he is transport- 
ed to a wonderful land, through which a musical river 
flows over pearly sand, and stones that glitter like stars 
on a winter night. Around him are “ crystal cliffs so 
clear of kind,” forests that gleam like silver and ring 
with the melody of bright-hued birds. On the other side 
of the river, at the foot of a gleaming cliff, he sees a 
maid sitting, clothed in bright raiment trimmed with 
pearls, and in the midst of her breast a great pearl. She 
rises and comes toward him. Then the father tries to cross 
over, but being unable, cries out to know if she is indeed 
his pearl, since the loss of which he has been “ a joyless jew- 
eller.” The maiden tells him that his pearl is not really 
lost, gently reproves the impatience of his grief, and ex- 
pounds — a little too ingeniously — some of the mysteries of 
Heaven, where she reigns as a queen with Mary. The 
father begs to be taken to her abiding-place ; she tells 
him that he may see, but cannot enter, “ that clean clois- 
ter.” She bids him go along the river-bank until he comes 
to a hill. Arrived at the top, he sees afar off the celestial 
city, “ pitched upon gems,” with its walls of jasper and 
streets of gold. At the wonder of the sight he stands, 
“ still as a dazed quail,” and gazing sees, “ right as 
the mighty moon gan rise,” the Virgins walking in pro- 
cession with the Lamb of God. His daughter is one of 
them. 

Then saw I there my little queen — 

Lord ! much of mirth was that she made 

Among her mates. 


32 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

He strives in transport to cross over and be with her ; but 
it is not pleasing to God that he should come, and the 
dreamer awakes. 

The Pearl exists in the same manuscript with two other 
remarkable religious poems, entitled respectively Cleanness 
and Patience. The first preaches the doctrine 
“ Cleanness" o£ p U1 qty of life, and enforces it with vivid 
Patience, transcriptions from the Bible stories of the de- 
struction of Sodom, the smiting of Belshazzar for pollut- 
ing the sacred vessels, and other like instances. The 
second illustrates the virtue of patience by the story of 
Jonah, — a little humorously, to a modern mind. The 
descriptions are some of them extraordinarily vivid, and 
the language has the same nervous vigor and graphic pict- ; 
uresqueness which distinguishes that of Sir G away ne and the 
Green Knight. This, indeed, has come down to us in the 
same manuscript with the Pearl and Cleanness and Pa- 
tience, and many scholars believe that they are all four the 
work of one man. If so, he was the most considerable 
poet between Cynewulf and Chaucer. 

The flowing together of Saxon and Norman -French 
brought about important results in the metre as well as in 
Fusion of the vocabulary of the new language. Saxon 
lrench a Metri- poetry depended for its rhythmical effect upon 
cai Systems. two d ev i C es, alliteration and accent. Each 
verse-line, no matter how long, contained four accents ; and 
three (sometimes four) of these accents had to fall on syl- 
lables beginning with the same consonant or with a vowel. 
The number of syllables in any given line could vary in- 
definitely ; and the accents could fall anywhere in the line, 
provided two occurred in the first half and one (or two) in 
the second half. The result was that the rhythm of Saxon 
verse was exceedingly loose and pliable. Norman-French 
verse depended upon two devices quite different from 
these, — rhyme, and regular line-length ; the metrical sys- 
tem was therefore very definite and exact. 


THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD 


33 


When the fusion came, there was a struggle as to which 
system should prevail in the new language. Some of the 
English poets, even as late as Langland, Chaucer's contem- 
porary, stood out for the old system of accent and allitera- 
tion, without rhyme and without fixed line-length ; others 
imitated slavishly the French system of rhyme and uni- 
form line-length ; still others, like the author of Sir 
Gawayne and the Green Knight, compromised by retain- 
ing alliteration and introducing rhyme at fixed intervals ; 
still others wobbled awkwardly between the two systems, 
using alliteration and rhyme in a confused and haphazard 
way in the same poem. The final outcome of the struggle, 
however, was that English verse gave up regular allitera- 
tion, retaining it only as an occasional and almost acci- 
dental ornament, and adopted rhyme outright. The prin- 
ciple of accent, however, was retained ; but, under stress of 
the French prosody, it was reduced to greater regularity. 
Here again, as in the case of the vocabulary, the merging of 
Saxon and French had a most happy result. It is by reason 
of this merging that English is capable of more subtle and 
varied lyrical effects than any other modern language. 

Nor did the poets fail to show, even as early as the thir- 
teenth century, their appreciation of what an exquisite 
instrument had fallen into their hands ; for we possess 
several songs of that period and a little later, which have 
in them the promise of Herrick and of Shelley. They are 
all songs of love and of spring. The best known is perhaps 
the “ Cuckoo Song," with its refrain of “ Loude sing 
Cuckoo ! " ; but even more charming is the spring-song 
“ Lent is come with love to town," and the love-song called 
“ Alisoun," with its delightful opening : 

BitwenS Mersh and Averil 
When spray * begineth to springe, 

The little fowl6s f have hyre % will 
On hyr8 lud § to singg. 

* Foliage. f Birds. J Their. § Voice. 


34 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


The England which finds utterance in these songs is a 
very different England from that which had spoken in 
“ The Wanderer,” and “ The Battle of Brunanburh.” It 
is no longer the fierce and gloomy aspects of Nature, but 
her bright and laughing moods, that arc sung. The imag- 
inations of men work now not in terms of war but of 
peace ; monotonous and melancholy grandeurs have 
given way to a bright and various humanity. 

Final Result ° J ° J 

of the Norman The Norman invasion has done its work. The 
conquest. conquerors have ceased to be such, for foreign 
wars and centuries of domestic intercourse have broken 
down the distinction between men of Norman and men of 
Saxon blood. The new language is formed, a new and 
vigorous national life is everywhere manifest. A new poet 
is needed, great enough to gather up and make intelligible 
to itself this shifting, many-colored life ; and Chaucer is 
at hand. 


CHAPTER III 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 

I 

Geoffrey Chaucer was born about 1340, of a family 
of London merchants. His father, a member of the Cor- 
poration of Vintners, had been purveyor to Chaucer's 
King Edward III. It was probably this family Earl y Life - 
connection with the court which made it possible for 
Chaucer, when about seventeen, to become a page in the 
household of the King's daughter-in-law, the Duchess of 
Clarence. Two years later he went with the king's army 
to France. Here he saw unrolled the brilliant pageant 
of mediaeval war, as the French chronicler Froissart has 
pictured it, at a time when chivalry and knighthood, 
though they had lost something of their inner meaning, 
were at their highest point of outward splendor. He 
beheld the unsuccessful siege of the city of Rheims ; was 
captured by the French, and held as a prisoner of war until 
ransomed by his royal master. 

On his return to England he was made a Squire of the 
King's Bedchamber, and probably spent the next ten 
years at Edward's court, then the most brilliant in Europe. 
The court of Edward was still practically a French court ; 
and Chaucer, although he seems to have decided very early 
to use his native tongue, necessarily turned to France for 
his literary models. The first period of his poetic life was 
spent in assimilating all that the French trouveres and 
ballad-writers had to teach him concerning his chosen art. 
The most famous work which the school of French trouveres 
had produced, was the Roman de la Rose , an elaborate alle- 

35 


36 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

gory of Love, the rose, growing in a mystic garden, warded 
by symbolic powers from the lover’s approach, and provok- 
ing endless disquisitions, serious or satirical, such as the 
later Middle Ages loved to spend upon the subtleties of 
sentiment. The Roman de la Rose was Chaucer’s first 
training school, and he took his training with character- 
istic thoroughness by translating the poem into English 
His French verse. The French P oet Des Champs con- 
Period. gratulates Chaucer, above all things, on having 
planted the rose-tree in the isle of giants.” Less than 
two thousand lines of this translation have survived ; 
indeed, the whole may never have been completed. But 
the Roman de la Rose left a profound impression upon 
Chaucer’s work, and for years he thought and wrote in the 
atmosphere which it created for him. During these years 
of French influence he wrote, for the knights and ladies of 
King Edward’s court, those “ ballades, roundels, virelays,” 
by which his fellow-poet Gower says “the land fulfilled 
was over all.” The most important work which remains 
to us from his pure French period, however, is the Book of 
the Duchesse, also known as “ The Death of Blaunche the 
Duchessef written in 1369, to solace the bereavement of 
her husband John of Gaunt, the king’s third son. 

In 1370, Chaucer was sent to the Continent on royal 
business. This was the first of many official missions which 
he executed for the king during the next ten years, in 
various parts of Europe. The opportunity afforded by 
these journeys for converse with many types of men, and 
observation of widely varying manners, was of the utmost 
importance in his poetic education. 

On Chaucer’s return to England after his first Italian 
mission, his services were rewarded by the gift of the im- 
portant post of controller of the customs on wool, skins, 
and tanned hides, at the port of London ; to which was 
added the complimentary grant of a daily pitcher of wine 
from the king’s cellars. His office as controller was an 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 


37 


arduous one, requiring his constant personal attendance. 

He was by this time married to his wife Philippa, lady-in- 

waiting to the consort of John of Gaunt, and lived in a 

house over one of the city gates near the Tower. We get 

from his poems various glimpses of his daily 

... . n ,,, 5 , , . . ' 7 Middle Life: 

life, especially of the eagerness for study, which, Italian 

after the day’s work was done, would send him 
home, regardless of rest and a newe thinges,” to sit “as 
domb as any stone ” over his book, until his eyes were dazed. 
The unquenchable curiosity of the men of the Renaissance 
was his, more than a century before the Renaissance really 
began in England. His, too, was their thirst for expres- 
sion. The great books he had come to know in Italy gave 
him no peace, until he should equal or surpass them. In 
1382, on the betrothal of the boy king, Richard II., to the 
young princess Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer wrote a wed- 
ding poem for the royal pair, the Parlement of Foules 
(Birds). Troilus and Creseide and the House of Fame 
belong also to this central or “Italian period” of Chau- 
cer’s literary life. In 1385 he was allowed to discharge 
his duties as customs officer by deputy. The first result 
of his new-found leisure was the Legend of Goode Wom- 
men, dedicated to the young queen. In 1386 he was 
elected to Parliament as member from Kent. This Par- 
liament was in opposition to the king, and succeeded in 
forcing upon him a council, one of the actions of which was 
to dismiss Chaucer from his office as controller. Three 
years later Richard II. again took affairs into his own hands, 
and as a renewed sign of the royal favor Chaucer was made 
clerk of the King’s works (supervising architect) at West- 
minster, the Tower, Windsor Castle, and other places 
During these years his masterpiece, the Canter- Laterlife . 
bury Tales , was growing under his hand. Tow- English Pe- 
ard the end of Richard II/s reign Chaucer fell 
into poverty, from causes not well known ; but in 1399, on 
the accession of Henry IV., a ballad entitled “ The Coni- 


38 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


pleint of Chaucer to his Empty Purse " brought him sub- 
stantial aid. He died in 1400, after signing a ninety-nine 
year lease of a house in St. Paul's Churchyard. 
t The most important event in Chaucer's life was his first 
visit to Italy, on the king's business, in 1372. Italy was 
^ fl then at the zenith of her artistic energy, in the 
enceonChau- full splendor of that illumination which had 
followed the intellectual twilight of the Mid- 
dle Ages, and which we know as the Renaissance, or “New 
Birth." Each of her little city-states was a centre of mar- 
vellous activity, and everywhere were being produced those 
masterpieces of painting, sculpture, and architecture, which 
still make Italy a place of pilgrimage for all lovers of art. 
The literary activity was equally great, at least in Tuscany. 
Dante had been dead for half a century, but his poetry was 
just beginning to assert itself as one of the world-forces in 
the realm of imagination. Petrarch, the grave, accom- 
plished scholar and elegant poet, was passing his closing 
years at his villa of Arqua, near Padua ; Boccaccio, poet, 
tale-writer, pedant, and worldling, was spending the au- 
tumn of his life among the cypress and laurel slopes of 
Fiesole, above Florence. The world which lay open to 
Chaucer's gaze when he crossed the Alps, was therefore one 
calculated to fascinate and stimulate him in the highest 
degree. Whether he saw Petrarch or Boccaccio in person is 
not known, but, from this time on, his Avork was largely in- 
fluenced by them, as well as by Dante. Through all three 
he came into closer contact with the great literature of the 
past, and acquired a new reverence for the ancient masters. 

Both the Parlement of Foules and the House of Fame 
are colored with Italian reminiscence ; but the chief fruit 
of Cha-ucer's Italian journeys was the long poem adapted 
Troiius and from Boccaccio's Fhilostrato (The Love-stricken 
Creseide. One), entitled by Chaucer Troiius and Cres - 
eide. The story of the love of the young Trojan hero for 
Cressida, and of her desertion of him for the Greek 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 


39 


Diomedes, had grown gradually through the Middle Ages 
until it reached Boccaccio's hand, who gave it an animated 
but ornate treatment in facile verse. Chaucer, though pre- 
tending only to translate, changed the theme radically. 
In his hands, the lovers' go-between, Pandarus, is trans- 
formed from a gilded youth of Troilus's own age and 
temperament, to a middle-aged man, plausible, good- 
natured, full of easy worldly wisdom and vulgar material- 
istic ideals, — a character as true to type and as vitally alive 
as if Shakespeare had drawn him. The growth of the 
love-passion in Cressida's heart is traced through its grad- 
ual stages with a psychological subtlety entirely new in 
English poetry. The action* dialogue, and “ stage-setting " 
of the poem are all given with the satisfying touch of a 
master-dramatist, and with the most surprising realism. 
Though the scene is ancient Troy, and the costumes are 
those of mediasval knights and ladies, we seem, in many 
passages of the poem, to be looking at a modern play or 
reading from a modern novel, so homely and actual does it 
appear. To be sure, Chaucer has not yet delivered himself 
from the mediaeval vice of tediousness. Troilus thinks 
nothing of expatiating to Pandarus upon the least of love's 
woes, through a score of seven-line stanzas. The brevity, 
directness, and pregnancy of Chaucer's latest style were 
still beyond his grasp. 

The Legend of Goode Wommen is chiefly interesting 
because of its prologue. In the body of the poem, Cleo- 
patra, Dido, Thisbe, and other types of feminine devotion 
in love, are given celebration, in covert tribute 

, . . . ° ~ “ Legend of 

to the wifely virtues of the young queen, whose Goode wom- 

favor had probably secured for the poet release 

from the drudgery of the customs office. These stories are 

adapted from a Latin work of Boccaccio, De Claris Muli- 

eribus. The long prologue, original with Chaucer, is the 

most winning of his many passages of personal confession 

and self-revealment. 


40 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


He represents himself as wandering in the fields on the 
May-day, the only season which can tempt him from 
his books. The birds are singing to their mates their song 
of “ blessed be Seynt Valentyn ! ”, and Zephyrus and Flora, 
as “god and goddesse of the dowry mede,” have spread 
the earth with fragrant blossoms. But the poet has eyes 
only for one flower, the daisy, the “ emperice (empress) 
and flour of floures alle.” All day long he leans and pores 
upon the flower ; and when at last it has folded its leaves 
at the coming of night, he goes home to rest, with the 
thought of rising early to gaze upon it once more. He 
makes his couch out of doors, in a little arbor, “ for deyntee 
of the newe someres sake,” and here he has a wonderful 
dream. He dreams that he is again in the fields, kneeling 
by the daisy, and sees approaching a procession of bright 
forms. First comes the young god of love, clad in silk 
embroidered with red rose-leaves and sprays of green, his 
“ gilt hair ” crowned with light, in his hand two fiery darts, 
and his wings spread angel-like. He leads by the hand a 
queen, clad in green and crowned with a fillet of daisies 
under a band of gold. She is Alcestis, type of noblest wifely 
devotion. Behind her comes an endless train of women 
who have been “trewe of love.” They kneel in a circle 
about the poet, and sing with one voice honor to woman’s 
truth, and to the daisy flower, the emblem of Alcestis. The 
love-god then glowers angrily upon Chaucer, and upbraids 
him for having done despite to women, in translating the 
Roman de la Rose, with its satire upon their foibles ; and 
in writing the story of Cressida, so dishonorable to the 
steadfastness of the sex. Alcestis comes to his rescue, and 
agrees to pardon his misdeeds if he will spend the rest of 
his life in making a “ glorious Legend of Goode Wommen,” 
and will send it, on her behalf, to the English queen. 
Chaucer promises solemnly, and as soon as he wakes, betakes 
himself to his task. 

It is probable that Chaucer did indeed enter upon this 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 


41 


poem with the design of devoting to it many years, and 
of making it his masterpiece. But he soon tired of it, 
for the reason that all the stories illustrate the same theme, 
and lack, when taker, together, that element of surprise 
and contrast essential to keep up the interest. As he went 
on he treated his work more and more perfunctorily, and 
at last left it unfinished. 

But the ambition to crown his life with some monumental 
work remained. The drift of his genius, as he grew older, 
was more and more toward the dramatic perception of real 
life. He had a wide experience of men, of all ranks and 
conditions ; and he had been storing up for years, with his 
keenly observant, quiet eyes, the materials for a presenta- 
tion of contemporary society on a great scale. Moreover, 
while Chaucer was growing up, England had influence of 
been growing conscious of herself. The strug- Jfon^Liffon 
gle with France had unified the people at last Chaucer * 
into a homogeneous body, no longer Norman and Saxon, 
but English ; and the brilliancy of Edward III.’s early 
reign had given to this new people their first intoxicating 
draugl l of national pride. The growing power of par- 
liament tended to foster the feeling of solidarity and 
self-consciousness in the nation. As a member of parlia- 
ment and a government officer, Chaucer felt these influ- 
ences to the full. It must have seemed more and more 
important to him that the crowning work of his life should 
in some way represent the varied thought and the varied 
external spectacle of the actual society in which he moved. 
With the happy fortune of genius, he hit, in his Canter- 
bury Tales, upon a scheme wonderfully con- pjan 
ceived for the ends he had in view. Collections canterbury 
of stories, both secular and sacred, had been 
popular in the Middle Ages, and the Kenaissance inherited 
the taste for them, while enlarging their scope, and human- 
izing their content. Boccaccio had set the example of 
throwing a graceful trellis-work of incident and dialogue 


42 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

about the separate stories of a collection. In his Decamerone 
a company of aristocratic young people are represented as 
having taken refuge from the plague raging in Florence, 
in a villa on the slopes of Fiesole. They wander through 
the valleys of oleanders and myrtles, or sit beside the foun- 
tains of the villa gardens, and beguile the time with tales 
of sentiment and intrigue. Chaucer, while adopting a 
similar framework, made his setting much more national 
and racy ; individualized his characters so as to make of 
them a gallery of living portraits of his time ; and varied 
his Tales so as to include almost all the types of narrative 
known to literature at the close of the Middle Ages. 

He represents himself as alighting, one spring evening, 
at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, a suburb at the southern 
The Pilgrims en ^ °f London Bridge, where afterward the 
at the Tabard. f amous Elizabethan playhouses, Shakespeare’s 
among them, were to arise. Southwark was the place. of 
departure and arrival for all Sou th-of- England travel, and 
especially for pilgrimages to the world-renowned shrine of 
Thomas-a-Becket, at Canterbury. A company bent on 
such a pilgrimage Chaucer finds gathered in the inn ; he 
makes their acquaintance, and joins himself with them for 
the journey. Counting the poet, they are thirty in all. 
There is a Knight lately come from the foreign wars, a 
man who has fought in Prussia and in Turkey, jousted in 
Trasimene, and been present at the storming of Alexan- 
dria, — a high-minded, gentle-mannered, knightly advent- 
urer, type of the chivalry which was passing rapidly away. 
With him is his son, a young Squire, curly haired and 
gay, his short, white-sleeved gown embroidered like a mead 
with red and white flowers ; he is an epitome of the gifts 
and graces of brilliant youth. Their servant is a Yeo- 
man, in coat and hood of green, a sheaf of peacock- 
arrows under his belt, a mighty bow in his hand, and a 
silver image of St. Christopher upon his breast ; he is the 
type of that sturdy English yeomanry, which with its gray 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 


43 


goose shafts humbled the pride of France at Crecj and 
Agincourt. There is a whole group of ecclesiastical fig- 
ures, representing in their numbers and variety the 
immense growth of the mediaeval Church. Most of them 
are satirical portraits, in their worldliness and gross mate- 
rialism only too faithful representatives of the corrupt 
Catholicism against which Wyclif struggled. First of all 
there is a monk, who cares only for hunting and good 
cheer; his bald head shines like glass, his 4 4 steep eyes ” 
roll in his head ; he rides a sleek brown palfrey, and has 
44 many a dainty horse” in his stables; his sleeves are 
trimmed with fine fur at the wrists, his hood is fastened 
under his chin with a gold love knot. As a companion 
figure to the hunting monk, Chaucer.gives us 44 Madame 
Eglantyne,” the prioress ; she is a teacher of young ladies, 
speaks French 44 after the school of Stratford-atte-bowe,” 
is exquisite in her table-manners, counterfeiting as well as 
she can the stately behavior of the court. Other ecclesias- 
tics are there, hangers-on and caterpillars of the Church : 
the Summoner, a repulsive person with 44 fire-red Cherubim 
face” ; the Pardoner, with his bag full of pardons 44 come 
from Rome all hot,” and of bits of cloth and pig’s-bones 
which he sells as relics of the holy saints. Chaucer’s 
treatment of these evil churchmen is highly good-natured 
and tolerant ; he never takes the tone of moral indigna- 
tion against them. But he does better ; he sets beside 
them, as type of the true shepherd of the Church, a 44 poor 
parson,” such as, under Wyclif’s teaching, had spread over 
England, beginning that great movement for the purifi- 
cation of the Church, which was to result, more than a 
century later, in the Reformation. Chaucer paints the 
character of the Parson, poor in this world’s goods but 
4 4 rich of holy thought and work,” with loving and rever- 
ent touch. The Parson’s brother travels with him — a 
Plowman, a 44 true swinker and a good,” who helps his 
poor neighbors without hire and loves them as himself ; he 


44 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

reminds us of that Piers Plowman of whom Langland, 
Chaucer’s great contemporary and anti-type, wrote in 
his Vision. A crowd of other figures fill the canvas. 
There is a Shipman from the west-country, a representa- 
tive of those adventurous seamen, half merchant-sailors, 
half smugglers and pirates, who had already made Eng- 
land’s name a terror on the seas, and paved the way for 
her future naval supremacy. There is a poor Clerk of 
Oxford, riding a horse as lean as a rake, and dressed in 
threadbare cloak, who spends all that he can beg or bor- 
row upon books ; he represents that passion for learning 
which was already astir everywhere in Europe, and which 
was waiting only the magic touch of the new-found 
classical literature to blossom out into genuine thought 
and imagination. There is a Merchant, in a Flemish 
beaver, on a high horse, concealing, with the grave impor- 
tance of his air, the fact that he is in debt. There is a 
group of guild-men, in the livery of their guild, all worthy 
to be aldermen ; together with the merchant, they rep- 
resent the mercantile and manufacturing activity which 
was lifting England rapidly to the rank of a great com- 
mercial power. There is the Wife of Bath, a figure con- 
ceived with masterly humor and realism, a permanent 
human type ; she has had “husbands five at church- 
door,” and, though “ somdel deaf,” expects to live to wed 
several others ; she rides on an ambler, with spurs and 
scarlet hose on her feet, and on her head a hat as broad as 
a buckler. These, and a dozen others, are all painted in 
vivid colors, and with a psychological truth which remind 
us of the portraits of the Flemish painter Van Eyck, 
Chaucer’s contemporary. Taken as a whole, they repre- 
sent the entire range of English society in the fourteenth 
century, with the exception of the highest aristocracy and 
the lowest order of villeins or serfs. 

At supper this goodly company hears from the host of 
the Tabard a proposition that on their journey to Canter- 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 


45 


bury, to beguile the tedium of the ride, each of them 
shall tell two tales, and on the homeward journey two 
more.* He agrees to travel with them, to act as master-of- 
ceremonies, and on their return to render judgment as to 
who has told the best story, the winner to be given a supper 
at the general expense. So it is agreed. The next morning 
they set out bright and early on their journey T he Pilgrims 
southward to the cathedral city. They draw ontheRoad - 
lots to determine who shall tell the first tale. The lot falls 
to the Knight, who tells the charming chivalric story of 
Palamon and Arcite. When it is finished the Host calls 
upon the Monk to follow. But the Miller, who is already 
drunk and quarrelsome, insists on being heard, and launches 
forthwith into a very unedifying tale. The Host rises in 
his stirrups and calls on the Parson for a story, “ by Goddes 
dignitee ! ” The Parson reproves him for swearing ; where- 
upon the Host cries that he “ smells a Lollard f in the 
wind,” and bids the company prepare for a sermon. This 
is too much for the Shipman, who breaks in impatiently. 
When the Host calls upon the Prioress, he changes his 
bluff manner to correspond with her rank and excessive 
refinement, speaking with polite circumlocution, “ as 
courteously as it had been a maid.” The Prioress responds 
graciously, and tells the story of Hugh of Lincoln, the lit- 
tle martyr who, after his throat had been cut by the wicked 
Jews, and his body thrown into a pit, still sings with clear 
young voice his Alma Redemptoris to the glory of the Virgin. 

So the stories continue, interrupted constantly by vivid 
dialogue and action on the part of the pilgrims. Two of 
the most charming tales are told by the Clerk and the 

* Counting the Host and the Canon’s Yeoman (who joins them 
on the road) the company consisted of thirty-two persons, making a 
total of a hundred and twenty-eight tales to be told. Less than a fifth 
of this number were actually written, and several of these were left 
fragmentary. 

f The followers of Wyclif were called Lollards. See p. 50. 


46 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

young Squire. The Clerk, after he has been rallied by the 
Host upon his still and thoughtful manner of riding, agrees 
to relate a story which he learned at Padua of ‘‘ Francis 
Petrarch, the laureate poet, whose rhetoric sweet enlu- 
mined all Italy of poetry.” It is the story of Patient 
G-rissel, which Chaucer borrowed from Petrarch's Latin ver- 
sion. The Squire's tale, as befits his years and disposition, 
is a bright tale of love, adventure, and magic, in which 
figure a flying horse of brass and other wonders. Chau- 
cer introduces himself into the succession of story-tell- 
ers with characteristic modesty and sly humor. Sobered 
by the miraculous tale of Hugh of Lincoln, the company 
is riding silently along, when the Host, to break the awe- 
struck mood, turns to Chaucer, and begins to joke him 
upon his shy abstracted air and his corpulency : 

‘ ‘ ‘ what man artow ? ’ quod he ; 

* Thou lookest as thou wouldest find an hare, 

Forever upon the ground I see thee stare. 

Approache near, and look up merrily. 

Now ware you, sirs, and let this man have place ; 

He in the waist is shape as well as I . . . 

He seemeth elvish by his countenance 
For unto no wight doeth he dalliance. 

Chaucer, thus rallied, begins one of those doggerel rhymes 
of knightly adventure, to which the romances of chivalry 
had in his day degenerated. The Rhyme of Sir Thopas is a 
capital burlesque of a style of poetry which Chaucer him- 
self had come to supplant. He has not got far before the 
Host cries out upon the “ drasty rhyming,” and Chaucer 
meekly agrees to contribute instead “ a little thing in 
prose,” a “ moral tale ; ” and he proceeds with the story of 
Melibeus and his wife Prudence, a very dreary tale indeed, 
matched for tediousness only by the prose sermon put into 
the mouth of the. Parson, with which the Canterbury 
Tales, in the fragmentary form in which they were left, 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 


47 


conclude. It is curious to note how Chaucer's style be- 
comes awkward, involved, and wearisome, as soon as he de- 
serts his natural medium of verse, and attempts to write 
in prose. 

In the sixteenth century and later, when, owing to the 
change in the pronunciation of words (especially the loss 
of the final e), the secret of Chaucer's versifica- Chaucer’s 
tion was lost, he was regarded as a barbarous Llterary Art - 
writer, ignorant of prosody, and with no ear for the mel- 
ody of verse. The contrary of this was the case. He was 
an artist in verse-effects, who paid constant and delicate 
heed to the niceties of rhythm and tone-color. In a half- 
huinorous address to his scrivener Adam, he calls down 
curses upon that unworthy servant, for spoiling good 
verses by bad copying, and in Troilus he beseeches his 
readers not to “mismetre" his book. From his very 
earliest poems, his work is in all formal details fault- 
less ; and as he progressed in skill, his music became con- 
stantly more varied and flexible. His early manner 
reaches its height in the exquisite rondel, intricate in 
form but handled with great simplicity of effect, which 
brings the Parlement of Foules to a melodious close. A 
good example of his later music may be found in the de- 
scription of the Temple of Venus in the Knight's Tale ; 
or, as a study in a graver key, in the ballad “ Flee fro the 
Press," which marks so impressively the deepening seri- 
ousness of Chaucer's mind in his last years. 

Chaucer employed three principal metres : the eight- 
syllable line, rhyming in couplets, as in the Boole of the 
Duckesse ; the ten-syllable line, also rhyming in couplets, 
as in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales ; and the same 
line arranged in seven-line stanzas * (known later as 
“rhyme royal"), as in Troilus. In his shorter poems he 
made, however, endless metrical experiments, and showed 
a mastery of intricate verse-forms, remarkable even in an 
* Rhyming a, b, a, b, b, c. c. 


48 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


age when the French had made verse-writing a matter of 
gymnastic skill. 

As for his material, Chaucer did not hesitate to take 
what suited him, wherever he found it ; sometimes borrow- 
sources of His wholesale without change, oftener adapting 
Material. ail d reworking his matter freely. Any such 
thing as “ originality,” in the modern sense, was undreamed 
of -in the Middle Ages ; the material of literature was com- 
mon property, and the same stories were endlessly repeated. 
Whoever would learn the “sources” from which Chaucer 
drew, must ransack the storehouse of mediaeval fiction, 
and examine no little of mediaeval science and philosophy. 
Chaucer’s was the only originality then possible, — he im- 
proved whatever he borrowed, and stamped it with his 
individuality of thought and style. That part of his work 
which we value most, however, such as the prologues to 
the Legend of Good Women and to the Canterbury Tales, 
was original in every sense. 


II 

Chaucer lived and wrote in a world where the lurid 
lights and grotesque shadows of the Middle Ages were 
only beginning to be penetrated by the clear dawn-light 
of modern culture. He, first of all men in England, felt 
the influence of that new illumination, as it shone from 
France, and from beyond the Alps ; and he followed it 
until it brought him out from among the abstractions and 
the monotonous dreams of the Middle Ages into a world 
of living reality, variety, and humor. In this, he was far 
beyond his age. The full force of his origi- 

Chaucer Con- . & ° 

Gowe^d with nallt y when lie is compared with John 

Gower, — the “ moral Gower” to whom he dedi- 
cated his Troilus. Chaucer, in his mature work, looks 
forward to the England of the Tudors ; Gower is still hope- 
lessly entangled in the abstractions and formless dreams 
of medievalism. 


THE AGE OE CHAUCER 


49 


John Gower (1325-1408) was an aristocrat and conser- 
vative, owning rich manors in Kent and elsewhere. He 
was known at court, and much appreciated 
there as a poet, but held no official position. 

He was extremely pious, and in old age retired with his 
wife to the priory of St. Mary Overy (now St. Saviour’s) 
in Southwark, not far from the Tabard Inn which Chau- 
cer had made famous. Here he spent his last days in 
devout observances ; and here his sculptured figure can 
still be seen on his tomb, his head, crowned with roses, 
pillowed upon his three chief volumes. These were each 
written in a different tongue ; the Speculum Meditantis * 
in French ; the Vox Clamantis in Latin ; and the Confes- 
sio Amantis in English. This hesitation in the matter of 
language shows how much entangled he was in the past, 
in the ideas of a time when England was not yet conscious 
of her national identity. 

The Confessio Amantis , like the Canterbury Tales, is 
a collection of stories. The framework is imitated from 
the Roman de la Rose ; a lover makes confes- The <<Con 
sion to a priest of Venus, a learned old man fessio Aman- 
named Genius, and the stories come in by way 
of moral illustrations. Abstractions — vices, virtues, the 
seven deadly sins — take the place of real living figures. 
As a whole, the poem is a monument of tediousness ; but 
a few of the stories are well-told. 

The Vox Clamantis is interesting for historical reasons. 
The second half of the fourteenth century was a time of 
great suffering among the poor people of Eng- , Vox Cla _ 
land. Four terrible plagues, the first in 1349, SePeasant 
the last in 1375, swept over the country, carry- Revolt, 
ing death everywhere. By one plague alone, half the pop- 
ulation perished. Frightful storms destroyed the crops. 
There was an earthquake ; and a terrific hailstorm, in the 

* A manuscript entitled Mirour de Vomme ( Speculum Hominis) re- 
cently discovered and published by Mr. G. B. Macaulay, is probably 
the Speculum Meditantis , long believed to be irrecoverably lost. 


50 


A HISTOEY OF ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 


midst of which, it was declared, a te devil appeared and 
spoke.” The exactions of the Church, the extravagances 
of Edward III., and the heavy cost of his foreign wars, 
added to the burden borne by the distracted peasantry. 
The fearlessness with which the Oxford reformer, John 
Wyclif, attacked the corruptions of the Church, and 
questioned the fundamental rights of property, was like 
flame to the fuel of discontent. In 1381 an immense 
uprising of the peasants occurred, under the leadership of 
Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and a socialist priest of Kent, 
named John Balle. They marched on London, sacked 
the Tower and the Savoy palace, and murdered an arch- 
bishop ; it seemed as if the throne and the whole social 
order were about to be overturned. It was this state of 
things which prompted Gower to write his Vox Clamantis . 
As a land-owner in Kent, he felt the full brunt of the 
disturbance. He writes from the aristocratic point of 
view, representing the common people as turned into 
beasts, oxen, dogs, flies, and frogs, by the evil magic of the 
time. The dull old poem keeps an interest by virtue of 
the intense feeling which pervades it, of horror and dismay 
at the social volcano which had opened for a moment, 
threatening to engulf the nation. 

John Wyclif (1320 P-1384), the man who by his teach- 
ing had helped, unintentionally, to foment the peasant 
rebellion, was primarily a religious reformer 
and theologian. His connection with English 
literature is, in a sense, accidental, but it is nevertheless 
very important. He attacked the temporal power of the 
church, advocating, partly in the interests of the overbur- 
dened poor, the appropriation by the state of all church 
The Loi- property. While waging a war of theory on this 
ment M ° ve ’ an( ^ °^ ier ecclesiastical questions, he planned 
and carried out a great practical movement, 
known as the Lollard movement, for arousing the common 
people to a more vital religious life. He sent out simple. 


Wyclif. 


THE AGE OP CHAUCER 


51 


devoted men, to preach the gospel in the native tongue, 
and to bring home to their hearers the living truths of re- 
ligion which the formalism of the medieval Church had 
obscured. These “ poor priests,” dressed in coarse russet 
robes and carrying staves, travelled through the length 
and breadth of the land, as Wesley’s preachers travelled 
four centuries later, calling men back to the simple faith 
of early apostolic times. Wyclif and his Lollard priests 
began the great Protestant appeal from the dogmas of 
the Church to the Bible, which culminated, in the sixteenth 
century, in Luther and the Reformation. In order to 
make this appeal effective with the masses, Wyclif under- 
took to translate the whole of the Bible into Wyclif > s 

English. With the assistance of Nicholas of Blble - 

Hereford, he completed his great task before his death in 
1384. Wyclif s Bible was revised and somewhat simpli- 
fied in style a few years later by John Purvey, and received 
its final form some time before the end of the century. It 
is the first great monument of prose style in English. By 
virtue of it, and of the sermons and tracts which he wrote 
in homely vigorous speech for the understanding of simple 
people, Wyclif earned his title of “father of English prose.” 

The peasant rebellion and the Lollard agitation give us 
glimpses of an England which Chaucer, in spite of the 
manysidedness of his work, did not reveal. The Canter- 
bury Tales contain only one reference to the plague, and 
only one to Lollardry ; both of these references are casual 
and half- jesting. Chaucer wrote for the court and the culti- 
vated classes, to whom the sufferings of the poor were either 
unknown, or accepted as a part of the natural order of 
things. lie is often serious, sometimes nobly so ; but intense 
moral indignation and exalted spiritual rapture „ 

° A A Chaucer con- 

were foreign to his artistic, gay, tolerant dis- trasted with 

% , . „ , in- -i- i Langland. 

position. In his graceful worldlmess, ms de- 
light in the bright pageantry of life; he shows the Norman- 
French strain ; the other half of the English nature, its 


52 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


mystical, sombre, spiritually strenuous side, found ex- 
pression in AVilliam Langland, author of the Booh concern- 
ing Piers the Plowman. He proceeds from the Germanic 
strain in the nation, and is the representative of those moral 
and spiritual traits which afterward came to be known as 
Puritan. 

All that we know of Langland he has told us himself, in 
the brief autobiographic hints contained in Piers the Ploiv- 
man . He was born probably at Colesbury Mor- 
hfs n iffe n and timer, near Malvern in Worcestershire, not far 
character. frQm the Welsh border. He was of low birth, 
though a freeman. He tells us that “ his father and friends ” 
put him to school, and made a clerk of him. For a time he 
“ romed about robed in russet,” in the manner of a mendi- 
cant, driven by vague thoughts and desires. Going up to 
London, he got him a “ chantry for souls,” one of the minor 
offices of the mediaeval Church ; his duty being to chant 
at stated intervals for the release from purgatory of the soul 
of some dead man, who had left a bequest for that purpose. 
His placebo and his dirig e and his “ seven psalms ” were the 
“ tools,” he says with a shade of self-contempt, by which he 
gained his bread. His poverty was extreme. With his wife 
Kitte and his daughter Calote, he lived in Cornhill, where 
his tall, gaunt figure, clothed in a sombre priestly cloak, 
got him the nickname of “ Long Will.” As he stalked 
through the crowded Strand, he would refuse to bow to 
fine lords and ladies clad in furs and silver, and to cry 
“ God save you, sir ! ” to sergeants of the law. His con- 
duct toward the rich and great, so unusual in that day, got 
him the name of an eccentric person, somewhat touched in 
the brain. Hints of mental struggles verging upon insanity 
occur in his confessions. “ My wit waxed and waned,” he 
says, “ until I was a fool.” A half-ferocious sincerity, a 
flaming indignation against the pretences and base com- 
placencies of the world, combined with the abstraction and 
inward air of the visionary, must have made him a puzzling 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER 


53 


and disconcerting personality, to those who thought of him 
as only one among the “lollares (i.e., idlers) and lewd her- 
mytes ” of London. The last trace we get of him is in 
Bristol, where, in 1399, he was writing Richard the Rede- 
less, a poem of protest and warning addressed to King Rich- 
ard II. Apparently, news reached him of the assassination 
of the king and of the usurpation of the throne by Henry 
IV., and he threw the poem by unfinished. The date of his 
death is unknown. 

His life-work was his great poem, The Vision of William 
concerning Piers the Plowman. Into this he put all that 
he had to say upon the questions of the day, and 
upon the great questions of human life. He “Piers the 
worked upon it for at least thirty years, con- Pl0wman> ” 
stantly rewriting and expanding it. It exists in three ver- 
sions, the first dating from about 1362, when Langland was 
thirty years old, the second from about 1377, the last com- 
pleted after 1390, perhaps as late as 1398-99. In these re- 
writings and recastings it grew from eight cantos to twenty- 
three ; and the conception of the chief character, Piers the 
Plowman, grew constantly more exalted. At first he is 
merely an honest, simple-hearted farmer, full of Christian 
helpfulness and practical justice. But in the later versions 
he is raised and glorified ; and is conceived of mystically as 
Jesus Christ, incarnate in the form of a lowly tiller of the 
fields. 

Although called collectively a Vision, the poem really 
consists of a series of visions. The first, the Vision of the 
Field full of Folk, gives a view of the corruptions of the state 
and of the social body. On a May morning, on 

J J ° Vision of the 

Malvern Hills, the poet, “ weary forwandered. Field fun of 

lies down to rest, and dreams. Beneath him, in 

the great plain, he sees gathered together a vast crowd of 

people, representing the manifold life of the world. All 

are busy, but their work is, with few exceptions, evil or 

futile. Some are sowing or ploughing, but only that idlers 


54 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


may waste the fruit of their toil. Pilgrims are journeying 
to holy shrines, that they may “ lie all their lives after;” 
minstrels and ribald story-tellers are plying their trade ; 
friars and pardoners are abusing their priestly station for 
their own low ends. Law-sergeants, tradesmen, and tav- 
erners mix with the changing crowd, and contribute each 
his characteristic abuse. The genius of the crowd, the 
incarnation of the worldly spirit, is Lady Meed (Bribery), 
a wonderful allegorical figure, symbol of that self-seeking 
and dishonesty which Langland everywhere saw poisoning 
the springs of social and political life. 

In the next Vision, that of the Seven Deadly Sins and of 
Piers the Plowman, we are given a group of these allegor- 
ical abstractions, painted, however, with so much 
seven Deadly realism and graphic detail, that, like the ab- 
stract figures of Pilgrim’s Progress, they seem 
as tangible and real as living beings, with whom, indeed, 
they mingle on equal terms. Among them is Piers, and to 
him they appeal to show them the way to Truth, i.e . 9 to 
God the Father. Piers knows Truth well, but refuses to go 
until he has ploughed his half-acre. All who come asking 
for guidance he sets to work. Many shirk their tasks, but 
are driven back by Hunger. As the first Vision gives a 
view of the corruptions of the state, and hints at their 
cause and remedy in the person of Lady Meed, so the second 
shows the individual sins of men, and preaches, as pre- 
paratory to personal salvation, the Gospel of Work, — the 
same gospel which Carlyle, who has many points of 
resemblance to Langland, was to preach five centuries 
afterward. 

The later Visions attempt to set forth the true theory 
of moral action, and of the spiritual life. The poem 
reaches its highest point of imaginative intensity in the 
account of Piers’s triumph over Death and Hell. He comes 
riding barefoot on an ass, without spurs or spear, to his 
“ joust in Jerusalem.” With the news of his triumph and 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 


55 


resurrection, the dreamer awakes in ecstasy, the joyous 
Easter bells pealing in his ears. 

The name of Piers Plowman was used as a rallying cry 
in the peasant uprising ; and the poem probably had much 
to do with forming Wyclif s evangelistic ideals, in his in- 
stitution of the “poor priests.” Langland’s sense of the 
equality of all men before God, his hatred of spirit of Lang- 
social falsities and hypocrisies, his belief in land,B Poem, 
the dignity of labor, give a modern tone to his poem, 
in spite of its archaic metrical form, and its mediaeval 
machinery of abstract figures. His deep religious sense and 
the grandeur of his mystical imaginings are neither ancient 
nor modern, but of all time. 

The metrical form which Langland chose, again contrasts 
him sharply with Chaucer. Chaucer threw in his lot from 
the first with the new versification imported Its Metrical 
from France, depending upon regular accent Form * 
and rhyme ; and he developed this in such a way as to 
bring out of it a rich and finished music. By his choice 
of the French system he put himself in line with the 
future evolution of English verse. Langland, either be- 
cause he knew that his popular audience would be more 
deeply touched by the ancient and traditional rhythms 
of the race, or because these were more natural to himself, 
adopted the old system of native versification, which de- 
pended upon alliteration for ornament, and allowed great 
irregularity both in the position of stressed syllables and in 
the number of syllables in the line. The opening verses 
of the poem will serve as a specimen: 

* In a sorner seson . whan soft was the sonne, 

I shope me in shroudes . as I a shepe were 
In habit as an hermit . unholy of workes ; 

Went wide in this worlde . wondres to here. 

* The caesura, or heavy pause in the middle of each line, is marked 
by a dot. The alliterative syllables, of which there are usually two in 


56 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


This metre is, to a modern ear, somewhat monotonous 
and uncouth. It adapts itself much better to recitation 
than to private reading ; and it is highly probable that 
Langland wrote with the expectation that his poetry 
would be chanted by minstrels in recitative, since the 
literature of the audience he addressed was chiefly dis- 
seminated in that way. However we account for it, the 
fact that the Vision is written in an antique and rapidly 
dying verse form, has told severely against it. From 
Chaucer flows the whole stream of later verse, as from a 
“well of English undefiled. ” Langland’s poem had no 
literary offspring, unless its effect may be traced in the 
miracle and morality plays of the early drama. Its un- 
couthness, moreover, is not limited to its metre. As a 
whole it is confused in plan, bewildered with detail, full 
of breaks and rude transitions. Its total effect is majestic, 
because of the force of imagination behind it, but not 
artistic. It lacks the clear, firm outline, and the harmo- 
nious proportion, which Chaucer’s supreme artistic sense 
enabled him to attain in his later years. 

That Chaucer was far in advance of his time, becomes 

clear when we note how persistently his fifteenth century 

imitators of successors turned back to him for inspiration, 

Chaucer and as their 
Gower. 

“ Fader dere and maister reverent,” 

and found themselves unable to do more than awkwardly 
or pallidly imitate him. The chief among these imita- 
tors was John Lydgate, a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, 
who began making verses before Chaucer’s 
death, and died before the outbreak of the 
Wars of the Roses. His Story of Thebes , based on Boc- 
caccio and Statius, is told as one of the Canterbury Tales ; 
the poet in his prologue feigns to have joined the pil- 

the first half, and one (sometimes two) in the second half, are stressed. 
There are normally four stresses in the line. 


Lydgate. 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 


57 


grims at Canterbury, and at the Host's request tells the 
story on the homeward journey. The device illustrates 
vividly the almost pathetic dependence of Lydgate and 
his brother poets upon their master. Lydgate's verse is 
markedly halting and tuneless. In this respect Thomas 
Occleve or Hoccleve (1370 ?-l 450?) was a better 

' ' Occlcvc. 

disciple. He had the benefit of Chaucer's per- 
sonal acquaintance and instruction, loved and mourned 
him deeply, and preserved, in the manuscript of his 
Governail of Princes (written for the Prince of Wales, 
afterward Henry V.), the well-known portrait of Chaucer 
as a gray-haired old man, hooded and gowned. 

A third poet who continued the master's tradition (with 
a good sprinkling of Gower, to be sure) has lived in liter- 
ary history as much by the picturesqueness of his personal 
story as by his poetry, which is nevertheless j ames i. of 
charming in its kind. This is the young Stuart the 

prince, afterward James I. of Scotland, who Q uair -” 
was captured by English sailors in 1405, and spent the 
next nineteen years in England as a prisoner, in the Tower 
of London, Windsor Castle, and other strongholds. At 
the time of his capture he was a child of eleven. As he 
grew up in solitude, he turned for diversion to poetry and 
music,— arts in which the Scottish kings were traditionally 
proficient. One day, from the windows of Windsor Castle, 
he saw a beautiful young girl walking in the garden below, 
as Palamon saw the fair Emilie in the Knight's Tale. The 
story of his love for Jane Beaufort and its happy outcome, 
the "young prince told with tenderness and fancy, in his 
King’s Quair. It is written in the seven-line pentameter 
stanza* invented by Chaucer and repeatedly used by him, 
though, in deference to the princely poet, it has since been 
known as <e rhyme royal." Both the style and plan of the 
King’s Quair are imitated from the artificial Erench poetry 
from which Chaucer more and more departed as he grew 
* Rhyming a, b, a, b, b, c, c. 


58 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


in original power, but from which neither Gower nor the 
Chaucerian imitators delivered themselves. It is signifi- 
cant of the failure of these imitators to perceive the im- 
mense originality of Chaucer’s later work, that they fre- 
quently put Gower on a level with him. In the Envoy 
of the Xing’s Quair, James recommends his “litel boke, 
nakit of eloquence,” 

“ Unto the ympnes (hymns) of my maisters dere, 
Gowere and Chaucere, that on steppis satt 
Of rhetorike whil they were lyvand here, 

Superlative as poets laureate, ’ ’ 

and he brings the poem to a close with a prayer that their 
souls may together enjoy the bliss of heaven. When, in 
1424, the prince, on the eve of release from his long cap- 
tivity, was married to the lady whom he had celebrated in 
the King’s Quair , his reverence for Gower prompted him 
to have the wedding held in the church of St. Savior’s, 
where the old poet lay buried. 

This excessive reverence for the poets of a preceding age 
is one sign among many that the natural springs of poetry 
Decay of were dry. The fifteenth century is, in fact, 
Fifteenth the a peculiarly barren one. Its most famous poet, 
Lydgate, seldom or never rose above mediocrity ; 
and the thin stream of artificial love-poetry which flowed 
down into the troubled times of the Wars of the Roses, 
grew, after James I., less and less, until it lost itself in the 
sands. 

In prose, however, the fifteenth century produced one 
work which has much of the elevation and imaginative 
Fifteenth splendor of great poetry, the Morte D’ Arthur 
sir Thomas Sir Thomas Malory. Malory was a knight, 
y * a gentleman of an ancient house, with its seat 
at Newbold Revell, Warwickshire.* As a young man he 

*Who Was Sir Thomas Malory? by G. L. Kittredge. Reprinted 
from Yol. Y. of Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature. 
Boston, 1897. 


THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 


59 


served in France, in the military retinue of Richard Beau- 
champ, Earl of Warwick, a warrior in whom lived again 
the knightly ideal of a former age, and who was known by 
the romantic title of “ Father of Courtesy.” Such a line- 
age and training fitted Malory peculiarly for his task of 
combining in a great prose-poem the legends of King 
Arthur and the Round Table, which he gathered from 
Geoffrey of Monmouth and the French trouveres. By 
good fortune he was master of a simple, flowing English 
style, primitive in structure, but capable of considerable 
flexibility and falling into pleasant natural rhythms. The 
only example which he had for such a use as he made of 
the new English prose, was in the famous Travels of Sir 
John Mandeville, compiled in French by Jean de Bourgogne, 
and translated into English late in the fourteenth century. 
The translator of these fictitious Travels is unknown, but 
whoever he was, he threw his marvellous tales of giant 
sheep, human beings with dogs* faces, “ anthropaphagi, and 
men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” into a 
simple, lucid prose, which, while lacking the terseness and 
energy of Wyclifs popular sermons, was the best instru- 
ment yet found for the journey-work of literature. This 
instrument Malory took up ; but in response to the superior 
dignity and beauty of his subject, he raised it to a higher 
power. The Morte Darthur is the one great oasis in the 
literary desert of the fifteenth century. It was finished 
by 1470, but was not printed until 1485, when Caxton, 
the first English printer, published it with an interesting 
preface from his own hand. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE RENAISSANCE : NON-DRAMATIC LITERATURE TO THE 
DEATH OF SPENSER 

The literary decline following the death of Chaucer was 
due largely to political causes. The dispute in regard 
to the throne, which culminated in the Wars of the Roses, 
distracted the country, wasted its energy, and finally 
destroyed in large measure the noble families 

Period of J ® ... 

Decline^ after on whose patronage early literature and art 

were dependent. The accession of Henry VII. 
in 1485 brought about a period of quiet and recovery. As 
its power increased, the country resumed its position in the 
family of European nations, and began ^through them to 
feel the stimulus of the movement called the Renaissance. 

The Renaissance was in essence an intellectual rebirth. 
It showed itself in the effort of the individual to free him- 
self from the rigid institutions of the Middle Ages, feu- 
dalism and the Church ; and to assert his right to live, to 
TheRenais- think, and to express himself as he pleased, 
sance. As men g a i ne( j this freedom they felt less in- 

clined to assent to the mediaeval view that this life should 
be sacrificed to the future ; they turned more and more to 
the present world, to the problems of gaining mastery in it 
through wealth or statecraft, of discovering its secrets 
through exploration and scientific experiment, of height- 
ening its enjoyments through art and literature. 

One force of immense importance in the Renaissance was 
the new knowledge of the world of antiquity, which was 
obtained through the recovery of the writings and works 

of art of the classical period. The ideal presented in 

60 


THE RENAISSANCE 


61 


the literatures of Athens and Rome, of life which should 
be lived for its present opportunities of human develop- 
ment, came to have a strong influence on men, ^ Influence 
• — an influence denoted by the term Humanism, of the cias- 
which was applied to the study of the classics. 

Moreover, the examples of perfection of form given by 
classical poets, orators, sculptors, and architects, became 
models on which the new taste for the beautiful formed 
itself. Naturally, Italy, as a seat of Roman civilization, 
possessed within herself a great store of the relics of the 
classical age, and was in the best position to receive more 
from the East. When the Turks conquered the Eastern 
Empire and captured Constantinople, in 1453, many Greek 
scholars betook themselves to Italy with their manuscripts ; 
and in this way Italian cities became centres of Greek 
study, and of the classical culture or humanism in which 
the new intellectual impulse was nourished. 

With all these advantages, Italy became the teacher of 
Europe in philosophy, in art, and in classical scholarship. 
Other nations, however, supplied elements of the new world 
which was being created. Spain and Portugal gave the 
practical energy that sent Columbus to America, and Vasco 
da Gama around Africa. Germany contributed the inven- 
tion of printing, by which the new civilization was diffused 
among the people ; and Germany also took the 
lead in the movement which had for its object the Renais- 
the emancipation of the conscience from the 
Church. A beginning had been made in this direction by 
Wyclif ; but the great forward step was taken, when, in 
1517, Luther nailed to the church door in Wittenberg, 
his attack upon the power of the Pope. It is true, this 
Reformation, as time went on, took the form of a moral 
reaction against the worldly spirit of the Renaissance ; 
but in its largest aspect it made not only for the religious 
liberty of the individual, but also for general freedom of 
thought. 


62 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


In the early Renaissance, we must think of England as 
lagging somewhat behind the more precocious nations, 
Italy and France. The English Renaissance can scarcely be 
said to begin until the reign of Henry VIL, and it did not 
come to its full splendor until the latter days of Elizabeth. 
Even before the accession of Henry VIL, however, we can 
discern signs of its coming. In 1476 Caxton set up his 
printing-press in London. Before this date one of the col- 
leges at Oxford had engaged an Italian teacher of Greek ; 
and in the next few years William Grocyn and Thomas 
Linacre went to Italy to study with the Italian humanists. 
They returned to give Oxford an international reputation as 
the home of Greek studies, so that the greatest scholar of 
the time, the Dutch Erasmus, came there to study, think- 
ing it no longer necessary for young men to resort to 
Italy. 

These men of the new learning, especially the younger 
generation, Erasmus and his friends John Colet and Thomas 
More, exemplify in memorable fashion the hopefulness and 
The Oxford idealism that attended the early progress of the 
Reformers. Renaissance. All three were reformers. Colet, 
who was afterward Dean of St. Paul's, set a model for the 
public school system of England, in his famous St. Paul's 
School. Erasmus sketched the character of the perfect 
ruler in his Institutes of a Christian Prince ; and More 
that of a perfect society, in his Utopia. All three were in- 
terested in the reform of the Church, and though they did 
not follow Henry VIII. in his revolt against the Pope, 
they prepared the way for the later alliance between the 
universities and the English Reformation. 

Still more important than the universities as a centre of 
Renaissance influence, was the court. Both Henry VII. 
and Henry VIII. ruled in the spirit of modern statecraft. 
Both encouraged trade and manufactures, and increased the 
wealth of the country. Both set aside the relics of feudal* 
ism by allowing men of low birth to rise to distinction, 


THE RENAISSANCE 


63 


through personal service rendered to the sovereign. Thus 
the court became the field for the display of individual 
ambition. Henry VIII., indeed, in his own character re- 
sembled strongly some of the Italian princes of T he court of 
the Renaissance, who mingled the enlighten- H enryvm. 
ment of the statesman with the suspicious cruelty of the 
despot. The men who played for power in his service had 
need of the utmost address, in a game where the stakes 
were the highest, and defeat was fatal. In his fondness for 
art, learning, and magnificence, Henry exhibited the taste 
of the Renaissance. During his reign Italian architects 
built Hampton Court Palace, one of the best examples of 
English Renaissance or Tudor architecture ; the German 
painter, Hans Holbein, came to England ; the court took 
on an aspect of splendor in its dress, its entertainments, 
its manners. 

The most attractive figure, both among the Oxford re- 
formers and later at the court of Henry, is Sir Thomas 
More (1478-1535). Although More separated from his 
early companions and threw himself into practical affairs, 
he never lost interest in the intellectual movement of the 
time. His famous Utopia (1515-1516) is an account of an 
imaginary commonwealth in which the social wrongs of 
England under the Tudors were righted. It is sir Thomas 
the handbook of a statesman, and as such it is More * 
concerned with problems of the present ; but still more it 
is a dream of the future, full of hopefulness and enthusi- 
asm for the improvement of a whole nation and of human 
nature itself. 

More's Utopia represents the Renaissance interest in the 
state as a work of art. A second interest, not less char- 
acteristic of the time, was that in the improvement of 
the individual by culture and education, which forms the 
subject of two essays by Roger Ascham (1515-1568), once 
the tutor of Queen Elizabeth. The first, called Toxopliilus 
(1545), was ostensibly written in praise of archery ; but it 


64 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


is really a defence of a generally sound, healthy, well-bal- 
anced life. The second. The Schoolmaster (1570), sets forth 
Roger the idea of education as a humanizing process 

Ascham. j n w hi c h the pupil must work with the teacher. 

Ascham was a scholar, and in his style as in his substance 
he marks the reverence for classical authority which fol- 
lowed the revival of learning. His purpose obliged him to 
choose English and to write simply, but he declares that it 
would have been easier for him to write in Latin. His 
view of life, however, is thoroughly English ; he praises 
learning not for its own sake, but because it furnishes 
discipline for character and examples for conduct. For 
him the aim of life is social usefulness ; the private virtues 
and the service of the individual to the state go hand in 
hand. “In very deed,” he says, “ the good or ill bringing 
up of children doth as much serve to the good or ill ser- 
vice of God, our Prince, and our whole countrie, as any 
one thing beside.” 

Both More and Ascham are to be regarded as writers for 
the aristocracy. Popular literature gathered about the 
chief movement of the time among the people, the Ref- 
ormation. The struggle for the emancipation of conscience 
from priestly control had begun in England nearly two 
centuries before, with Wyclif ; and in spite of persecution 
the spirit of the Lollards had ’'survived^ until the reign of 
Henry VIII. This spirit, strengthened by the example of 
the German and Swiss reformers, supplied the moral force 
which made Henry’s political separation from Rome in 
The English 1534, on account of his first divorce, an oppor- 
Reformation. tunity for a real reformation. This force went 
out through the country in the sermons of Hugh Latimer, 
the boldest among Henry’s reforming bishops, and the most 
powerful preacher of the day. He was of peasant birth ; 
and his writings represent a development of popular Eng- 
lish prose, straightforward, racy, simple as homespun. His 
style shows the effect of the strongest and most widely dif- 


THE RENAISSANCE 


65 


fused of the literary influences of the time, the translation 
of the Bible by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale 
(1526-1538), of which the popular character is shown by 
the fact that ninety-seven per cent, of the words are Anglo- 
Saxon. A union between the Latin-English style of the 
educated classes and the simple every-day speech of the 
people is shown by another literary monument of the Inf- 
ormation, the Book of Common Prayer, prepared by Cran- 
mer, the Archbishop of Canterbury nnder Henry VIII. 
and Edward VI. Here the sonorous Latin words, full of 
suggestion for the lover of the classics, are often followed 
by their Anglo-Saxon equivalents, the sentences falling 
with a rhythm which is in part caught from Hebrew po- 
etry, in part, perhaps, from the artificial style which for- 
eign models had introduced into England. 

^jjfWhile English prose was thus developing to express the 
ideas of the time on the two important subjects, culture 
and religion, poetry was also taking its modern form. 
The last poet of the old school of imitators of Chaucer was 
John Skelton. Toward the close of his life, however, he 
broke away from the tradition of his youth, and The New 
adopted a rough, short metre, adapted to the Poetry ' 
energy of his satire, which sounded the popular cry against 
abuses in church and state. In his harshness and meagre- 
ness he affords a striking contrast to two poets of the close 
of Henry’s reign, who relieved the poverty of English 
verse with forms imported from Italy, and thus began 
modern English poetry — Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) 
and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). 

The career of the former illustrates particularly the 
value to English literature of the close connection with 
foreign countries, which Henry VIII.’s ambi- sir Thomas 
tion to take part in European affairs did much Wyatt * 
to restore. Wyatt was frequently abroad on diplomatic 
missions ; like Chaucer he visited Italy, and also Spain 
and France. His poems are, for the most part, transla- 


66 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


tions and imitations of forms characteristic of Italian 
poetry, especially the love sonnet, of which Petrarch in his 
sonnets to Laura had given the chief examples. With 
Petrarch’s imitators the sonnet had become a merely liter- 
ary exercise, devoted to the expression of a love which 
might be entirely imaginary, or directed toward an imag- 
inary person. Wyatt’s sonnets, therefore, like those of 
his Italian masters, need not be regarded as having strict 
biographical truth, though attempts have been made to 
find in them the history of a personal relation, and some 
have guessed that they were inspired by Henry’s second 
queen, Anne Boleyn. At all events Wyatt’s poetry sug- 
gests that even a conventional form was for him the means 
for a sincere expression of feeling ; even his translations 
seem charged with his own temperament, and his render- 
ing of the Penitential Psalms is touched with personal 
religious emotion. Wyatt’s effort to achieve the regularity 
and finish of his Italian models was not always successful ; 
he makes bad rhymes, he fails to harmonize word and 
verse accent, he stumbles in scansion. Yet such poems 
as “ Awake my Lute ” and “Forget not yet,” are eminent 
examples of lyrical power. 

Wyatt’s companion poet, Surrey, born in 1517, and 
beheaded in 1547, was younger than his master both in 
The Earl of years an( l in spirit. In contrast to Wyatt’s 
Surrey. gravity he has all the exuberance of the age, a 
perpetual charm of youth and promise, as his brilliant fig- 
ure passes through the sunlight and shadow of Henry’s 
court, moving gracefully and carelessly to the scaffold 
which awaited him. Like Wyatt he imitated the Italian 
amorous poets ; but more significant than his love poems 
are those of friendship, the sonnets to Clere and to Wyatt, 
and the elegy on the Duke of Richmond, which are full 
of feeling, intimate, personal, sincere. Often, as, for 
example, in the youthful poem which begins “ The soote 
season,” he shows an interest in nature, and a realism 


THE REHAISSAHCE 


67 


in picturing it, which are, for the time, quite extraordi- 
nary. 

Surrey, however, like Wyatt, rendered his chief service 
to English literature, by enriching its resources with for- 
eign forms, and especially by his introduction of blank 
verse, in his translation of two books of the JEneid. Blank 
verse had been used in Italy a few years before in a trans- 
lation of the same work, so that Surrey did not originate 
the form ; but the happy skill with which he adapted it, 
and thus discovered to English poetry its most powerful 
and characteristic verse form, is worthy of all praise. In- 
deed, Surrey's greatness is that of artistic common-sense. 
He had wit to see the value of foreign forms which were 
applicable to the English tongue. In those which he chose 
he made such changes as were necessary to adapt them still 
further to English requirements. The English sonnet 
which Shakespeare used, consisting of four quatrains and a 
couplet, was Surrey's adaptation. He did his work rapidly 
and instinctively ; he had no time for long labors of ex- 
periment, for wavering uncertainty between the merits of 
rival forms. He was primarily not a man of letters, but a 
man of action, a soldier. With singular freedom from hes- 
itation or misgiving, with the happy guess of a man accus- 
tomed to succeed, he picked out his weapon from the score 
which offered, fitted it to his hand, and in a few rapid 
passes showed his followers its use. 

Poetry in the age of Henry VIII. was usually intended 
for private circulation in manuscript form. By the middle 
of the century, however, there had grown up a demand on 
the part of the reading public which publishers attempted 
to supply by volumes of miscellaneous verse. <« Totter s 
The first of these collections, TotteVs Mis- Miscellan y- 
cellany, which contained the poems of Wyatt, Surrey, 
and several of their followers, appeared in 1557, a date 
which marks the public beginning of modern English 
verse. 


68 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


The influence of the new poetry is shown by a volume 
published a few years after Tottel’s Miscellany, called 
Thomas sack- The Mirror for Magistrates. This work in 
vine. general character looks back to an older fashion, 

being a continuation of Lydgate's Fall of Princes ; but it 
contains some excellent modern poetry in the “ Induction" 
and “ The Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham." 
These were written by Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), 
afterward Lord Buckhurst, who also wrote, in collabora- 
tion with Thomas Norton, the first regular English tragedy, 
Gorboduc (see p. 96). Both in his contributions to “ The 
Mirror," which are in Chaucer's seven-line stanza, and in 
Gorboduc, which is in blank verse, Sackville shows sur- 
prising mastery of his form. He has a sureness of touch 
and a freedom from technical errors, which put him 
beyond Surrey and Wyatt ; and his imaginative energy is 
suggestive of the great poets who were to follow. 

Except for the three poets mentioned, however, it is a mat- 
ter of remark that English literature through the reign of 
Henry VIII. and the greater part of the reign of Elizabeth, 
gives little promise of the outburst which was to mark the 
closing years of the century. That outburst was the result 
of a sudden, overwhelming enthusiasm in which the whole 
nation shared. The accession of Elizabeth, in 1558, dis- 
persed the threatening clouds of civil and religious war 
The Age of that had been gathering during the reigns of 
Elizabeth. Edward and Mary. The force of the Renais- 
sance, which had been checked for a time by national hesi- 
tation, manifested itself anew and more widely. Many 
things combined to give individual distinction to character, 
and variety and color to life. The enlarged possibilities of 
the world, the new lands beyond the sea, offered unlimited 
opportunity for action. The diffusion of knowledge of the 
past, together with the freedom of thought which the 
Reformation had brought about, afforded opportunities as 
tempting for speculative enterprise and imaginative ad- 


THE RENAISSANCE 


69 


venture. Altogether there appeared to men a new, wider, 
richer world ; and with it came a clearer consciousness of 
the individual personality which that world seemed made to 
satisfy. This discovery of the new world and of man, as it 
has been called, coming to the nation in the time of joyful 
reaction from the uncertainty and peril of Mary’s reign, set 
the whole mass into vibration ; but the tendencies which 
made for purely personal aggrandizement were both directed 
and kept in check by the growth of national consciousness. 
Elizabeth’s reign united the nation, and her personal pres- 
ence gave it a visible sign of unity. Under her rule England 
passed through an experience as dramatic as that of Athens 
at Marathon ; after a long period of suspense the strain 
was relieved by the wonderful repulse of the Spanish 
Armada in 1588. The national feeling, made so intense 
by danger and victory, shines through the literature of the 
time. The eager, instinctive patriotism of the people 
found utterance in the choruses of Shakespeare’s Henry 
V. The more conscious political virtue, which touched 
with something of high purpose the lives of Sidney, of 
Sackville, even of Essex and Raleigh, is reflected in Spen- 
ser’s Faerie Queene. 

For reasons given in the next chapter, the drama was 
the most broadly popular and spontaneous expression of 
the many-sided life of the time. Compared with this, the 
natural language of the English people, the other forms 
of literature seem unvital. Yet it must be Elizabethan 
remembered that many of the interests of the Llterature * 
Renaissance were not matters of direct popular feeling, but of 
conscious cultivation. And again, the drama was the only 
form in which the Elizabethan was at all sure of his art. 
In other kinds of writing he was an experimenter, a 
learner. To this fact we must attribute much of that 
artificiality which makes Elizabethan non-dramatic liter- 
ature difficult to read, especially the prose of Lyly, Sidney, 
and their followers. 


70 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


John Lyly (1553-1606) was educated at Magdalen Col- 
lege, Oxford, where he seems to have gained the reputation 
of being a trifler— 1 “the fiddlestick of Oxford,” 
John Lyly. ^ enem y called him. His superficial cleverness, 
however, enabled him to write a successful account of the 
culture of the period, in Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit 
(1579), and its sequel, Euphues and his England (1580). 

Euphues is a work of fiction in which an exceedingly 
slight plot serves to connect a succession of conversations, 
letters, and essays, treating such subjects as love, educa- 
tion, religion, and manners. It illustrates the interest 
of the time in intellectual development, restrained, how- 
ever, by the feeling that “ vain is all learning without the 
taste of divine knowledge.” Still more important than 
its relation to private morals, was its influence 
Euphues. ^ a manua i 0 f public and social conduct. It 
set both a fashion of speech, and a code of manners; a 
dialect and an etiquette for court usage. However in- 
direct, wasteful, and artificial this fashion now appears, 
it was in its time an evidence and a cause of refinement. 
One of the distinguishing accomplishments of the Renais- 
sance was the elevation of social life into a fine art ; and of 
this result in England Euphues was the chief sign. 

The artificial language which Euphues and his friends 
used, and which became a literary fashion, is the charac- 
teristic of the book for which it is remembered to-day. 
Among Lyly's mannerisms the most remarkable is the 
„ t . arrangement of words in antithesis, the con- 

Euphuism. , . ; 7 

trast being marked by alliteration, thus : “Al- 
though I have shrined thee in my heart for a trusty 
friend , I will shunne thee hereafter as a trothless foe.” 
Another peculiarity is his lavish use of similes drawn from 
what passed for natural history, as : “ The milk of the 
Tygresse, that the more salt there is thrown into it the 
fresher it is.” Euphuism was but one form of a widely 
diffused tendency in Renaissance literature, an attempt to 


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prove tlie artistic value of prose by giving it some of the 
qualities of poetry. Earlier writers than Lyly, Ascham 
and Cranmer, had shown traces of it ; and English prose 
did not escape from its influence until well on in the next 
century. In Lyly’s own generation, which was distin- 
guished for its interest in all sorts of artistic experiments, 
other forms of this tendency appeared, notably that intro- 
duced by the most charming and the most forceful of the 
literary dilettantes of the age, Stf Philip Sidney. 

Philip Sidney was born in 15®4, of one of the most dis- 
tinguished families in England. He was sent to Shrews- 
bury school and to Oxford ; and then spent some time 
abroad, in Paris, Vienna, and Italy, whence he returned 
to Elizabeth’s court. There he represented the more 
splendid and elevated political conceptions of the time. 
His uncle, the Earl of Leicester, was the political chief 
of the Puritan party, which favored committing England 
to a definite alliance with the Protestant states of Europe ; 
and in furtherance of this policy Sidney was sent on a 
mission to Germany in 1577. He was also eagerly in- 
terested in the development of English power on the sea. 
In 1583 he got a grant of land in America, and two years 
later he made an unsuccessful attempt to escape sir philip 
from court and join Sir Francis Drake in one Sidney, 
of his half-piratical expeditions against the Spaniards. 
This same year he accompanied the English army which 
was sent to help the Dutch Protestants against Spain ; and 
in 1586 he fell in a skirmish at Zutphen. 

Sidney’s name, more than any other, stands for the 
greatness of national and personal ideals which we tradi- 
tionally associate with the age of Elizabeth. It is, there- 
fore, somewhat disappointing to find his writing less 
eminent than his life. It must be remembered, however, 
that Sidney, like most men of position of his age, wrote 
not for the public but for himself and for a few friends. 
His works were published first in pirated editions, the 


72 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Arcadia in 1590, and Astrophel and Stella in 1591. The 
latter is a collection of songs and sonnets, evidently ad- 
dressed to one person. Lady Penelope Deverenx, after- 
“ Astrophel war d Lady Rich. Sidney and Lady Penelope 
and steiia.” p a( j been betrothed when the latter was a child. 
For some reason the match was broken off, and Lady 
Penelope married Lord Rich, with whom she lived for a 
while most unhappily. Whether Sidney actually loved 
her, when it was too late, or whether he wrote love sonnets 
as a literary exercise^ addressing them to his old friend 
out of compliment and sympathy, it is impossible to say. 
On the one hand there is in his sonnets much of the con- 
ventional material of the Italian sonneteers ; but on the 
other there are touches so apt to the situation of a man 
who loves too late, that one hesitates to ascribe them to 
mere dramatic skill. In none of the many sonnet cycles 
of the age, except Shakespeare’s and Spenser’s, do we find 
so much that has the stamp of personality upon it ; surely 
in none except these, so much that has the accent of great 
poetry. 

Sidney’s chief literary adventure was the Arcadia , 
which he began in 1580, when, in consequence of a quarrel 
with the Earl of Oxford, he was in temporary disgrace and 
banishment from court. The writing of the Arcadia was 
merely a summer pastime, undertaken to please the Count- 
ess of Pembroke, Sidney’s sister. The form of the work 
was suggested by romances, popular in Italy and in Spain, 
The “Area- which the scenes are laid in a pastoral country 
dia -” like the ancient Arcadia. The prose tale is 
interrupted at intervals by passages of verse, or eclogues, 
in which the shepherds sing of love and the delights of 
rural life. This form of literature had an immense charm 
for countries which were becoming a little weary of the 
activity of the early Renaissance ; and Sidney himself, in 
his banishment from court, doubtless felt the influence 
of this mood. It was, however, a passing one, for Sid- 


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ney was essentially a man of action ; and his story, which 
begins in thoroughly pastoral fashion, quickly changes 
to a kind of romance of chivalry set in an arcadian land- 
scape. 

In his attempt at enrichment of style, Sidney worked as 
consciously as Lyly. He frequently uses the antithesis and 
other mechanical devices, but his chief resource is in prod- 
igality of ornament and elaboration of figure. 

For example, one character is besought “to the 6 “Area- 1 
keep her speech for awhile within the paradise of 
her mind.” Others are said to be “getting the pure silver 
of their bodies out of the ore of their garments.” This bold- 
ness of metaphor is characteristic of the spirit of the book. 
Sidney spins his tale with a pure love for it, with the en- 
thusiasm that he might have thrown into a buccaneering 
expedition to the Indies, if fortune had been kind to him ; 
and this is the real source of such pleasure as we feel to- 
day in reading the Arcadia . His delight in his work is per- 
fect, and gives to the book its exuberance, its fulness, its 
color. His style is whimsical and variable, epigrammatic 
and exhaustive by turns ; now conscientious and dull, again 
full of the daring and passion of poetry. 

The verse passages which divide the several books of the 
Arcadia are interesting for their attempts at imitation of 
various classical and Italian forms. Sidney was, in verse as 
in prose, an amateur and an experimenter. He, with Sir 
Edward Dyer and others, formed a club called 
the Areopagus, of which the object was to culti- Literary 
vate Latin metres to the exclusion of the rhym- 
ing verse natural to the English tongue. This attempt 
was in line with similar undertakings in France and Italy, 
and serves to show how strong and how dangerous an influ- 
ence the revival of learning exerted upon the beginnings of 
modern literature. 

Sidney subsequently shook himself partly free from such 
artistic vagaries. In 1579 Stephen Gosson published a 


74 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


pamphlet called The School of Abuse, in which, as a Puritan, 
he attacked the art of the age, especially the drama. 

Sidney replied with his Defence of Poesie in 1581. In 
this, one of the earliest pieces of English criticism, Sidney 
“The Defence showed his classicism by his approval of plays 
of Poesie. built on the Latin model; but he defended 
English poetry, even of the native ballad sort, exclaim- 
ing, “I never heard the old song of ‘ Percy and Douglas 3 
that I found not my heart moved more than with a trum- 
pet” 

The style of The Defence of Poesie is much more work- 
manlike than that of the Arcadia , but it was the latter 
which became an influence upon English prose. Sidney's 
Arcadia wadi Lyly's Euphues were the two popular books of 
the time, and they were naturally the models for authors 
who depended upon the reading public. Apart from the 
writers who gathered about the court, — amateurs like Sid- 
ney, or those who, like Spenser, looked for support to the 
The Popular patronage of the rich and preferment from the 
wafers. Queen, — there appeared in the reign of Eliza- 

beth a group of men who lived directly on their literary 
earnings. These latter were often men of university edu- 
cation, who had lost caste. As a class they showed the 
intense desire for sensual enjoyment, the violence of pas- 
sion, the impatience of restraint, social or moral, that 
accompanied the assertion of individuality in the Itenais- 
sance. The irregularity of their lives, which ended often 
in misery or disgrace, has made them the heroes of stories 
famous among the tragedies of literature. Marlowe was 
stabbed to death in a tavern brawl ; Peele died of dissipa- 
tion ; Greene, as the story goes, from surfeiting ; and Nash, 
we are told, of starvation. 

Such men turned chiefly to the theatre, as the most profit- 
able market for literature ; but they have left also a large 
body of miscellaneous writings, fiction, biography, pam- 
phlets. They were not experimenters and innovators like 


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Sidney and his circle, but they were quick to test any liter- 
ary theory or form by its adaptability to popular taste. 
Robert Greene (1560-1592) began his career by imitating 
Lyly, in a number of Euphuistic romances. Greene Nash 
After the Arcadia had begun to circulate in andL <><ige. 
manuscript, he wrote Menaphon (1589), a pastoral tale in 
which he clearly imitated Sidney's style. His most indi- 
vidual work is in the partly autobiographic tales, Greene's 
Repentance and A Groat's Worth of Wit , in which he 
drew from his own life lessons of morality, possibly with 
a view to the increasing importance of the Puritan part of 
the reading public. Thomas Hash (1567-1600) was the 
journalist of the group. His pamphlets represent the inter- 
est of the public in questions such as the authority of the 
bishops, and in private scandal such as gathered about the 
life of his friend Robert Greene. His work was, in the 
main, ephemeral. He is chiefly remembered for his story 
Jack Wilton , in which the tricks and adventures of an 
English boy on the continent are described, with fictitious 
references to historical events and persons. Another writer 
who for some years belonged to the crew of literary advent- 
urers, was Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) ; his romance, 
Rosalynde (1590), (which furnished the story of As You 
Like It) is the most perfect bit of fiction of the time. 
In his sub-title Euphues' Golden Legacy , Lodge recognized 
his obligations to Lyly ; but his style is far less artificial 
than that of his prototype, and the exquisite pastoral set- 
ting (preserved by Shakespeare in his Forest of Arden) 
is to be set down rather to Sidney's influence. Lodge, in 
a greater degree than Greene and Nash, had the lyrical gift 
which few writers of the time were wholly without. His 
highest fame is as the writer of the exquisite songs with 
which he interspersed his romances. Such lyrics as “ Love 
in my bosom like a bee" and “ Like to the clear in highest 
sphere," from Rosalynde , show both the native power of 
the singer and the refinement of the artist. 


76 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


These writers represent the eccentric, ornamented, often 
loosely constructed prose of the Renaissance ; a prose which 
was to be carried on by the writers of the next generation, 
and to become the typical style of the seventeenth century. 
Beside them, however, must be mentioned a writer who 
stands for a saner, more intellectual development of liter- 
ary style. During the later years of Elizabeth’s reign, the 
country was distracted by a dispute carried on between 
the bishops on the one hand, and on the other the Puritan 
party which denied their authority. This dispute soon 
passed the bounds of literary controversy ; and the refusal 
of the Puritans to attend the services of the Church of 
England, and the efforts of the government to compel 
them, made the matter one of politics. Before the break 
was irreparable, however, the argument for the author- 
ity of the Church was stated with winning eloquence by 
Richard Richard Hooker (1553-1600) in his Ecclesi- 
astical Polity , four books of which were pub- 
lished in 1594, a fifth in 1597, and three more after the 
author’s death. As befits the subject, Hooker’s prose is 
grave and regular, with something of the precision of 
classic style, as opposed to the wilfulness and unconven- 
tionality of Sidney’s romantic manner. Indeed, Hooker 
was, at the end of the sixteenth century, as was Dry den 
at the end of the seventeenth, a writer who developed a 
very competent form of English prose to fulfil a serious 
intellectual purpose. Unlike Dryden, however, he did 
not make his example of decisive force in determining the 
practice of his successors. 

The development of a great prose literature in England 
was reserved for a later century ; the chief glory of the 
English Renaissance was its poetry. The experiments and 
studies in foreign forms, made by Wyatt and Surrey, were 
the preparation for a period of wonderful poetic achieve- 
ment, in which two names stand clearly first. As in the 
drama there rises above earlier and later playwrights the 


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77 


single surpassing figure of Shakespeare, so in non-dramatic 
poetry stands pre-eminent Edmund Spenser, the poet of 
The Faerie Queene. 

Spenser was born in London in 1552. He was sent to 
the Merchant Tailors’ School, and then to Pembroke Col- 
lege, Cambridge, where he took his master’s de- Edmund 
gree in 1576. He then spent some time in the Spenser, 
north of England. In 1578, however, he was in London, 
in attendance on the Earl of Leicester, seeking to estab- 
lish himself through the influence of his friends at court. 
After the publication of his Shepherd’s Calendar , in 1579, 
preferment came to him in the shape of an appointment in 
Ireland, as secretary to the deputy. Lord Grey de Wilton. 
In Ireland Spenser was given office, and was granted, among 
other estates, the Manor of Kilcolman, whither Sir Walter 
Raleigh came in 1589 to visit him. Raleigh saw the first 
three books of The Faerie Queene ; and under his advice 
Spenser went to London in the following year, to read 
them to the Queen and to publish them. The success of 
the poem was immediate, but the reward from the Queen, 
in whose honor it was written, was disappointingly small. 
Soon after its publication Spenser put forth a volume of 
poems styled Complaints. The circumstances of his jour- 
ney to London he related, after his return to Ireland, in 
Colin Clout’s Come Home Again , in which he resumed the 
pastoral style of The Shepherd’s Calendar. In the next 
few years Spenser was busy with his courtship and mar- 
riage, which are beautifully commemorated in the sonnet 
series, the “Amoretti,” and in his wedding song, or “Epi- 
thalamion.” He went to London again in 1596 to publish 
the second three books of The Faerie Queene. During this 
visit he wrote the “ Hymn of Heavenly Love,” and 
“Hymn of Heavenly Beauty,” to accompany two earlier 
“ Hymns in Honor of Love and Beauty.” He also wrote 
in London the most exquisite of his shorter poems, the 
“ Prothalamion.” Soon after his return to Kilcolman, 


78 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


there broke out one of those frequent insurrections which 
marked British rule in Ireland. Spenser’s castle, which 
stood in the path of the storm, was sacked and burned. 
He fled with his family to London, where, in 1599, he died 
in poverty. 

Spenser’s life was spent chiefly in three places, each of 
which left strong marks upon his character and work, — 
Cambridge, London, and Ireland. At Cambridge he found 
the learning of the Renaissance, especially the philosophy 
of Plato, which appears clearly in The Faerie Queene and 
in the “ Hymns.” Here also he came to know the litera- 
ture of France and Italy ; his first published work con- 
sisted of translations from Petrarch and the French poet 
Spenser at du Bellay. At Cambridge, also, he came into 
Cambridge, contact with the literary theories of the time ; 
one of which was the idea put forward by Sidney and his 
friends, that English verse should be written according to 
Latin rules of prosody. This subject is discussed at length 
in the letters which passed between Spenser, after he 
removed to London, and his Cambridge friend, Gabriel 
Harvey. Spenser was too genuine a poet to be injured by 
such theories, but the influence of the environment where 
they were rife is seen in his scrupulous attention to the 
technical requirements of his art. 

Of this Cambridge period the typical product is The 
Shepherd's Calendar , a series of twelve pastoral poems or 
“TheShep e( dogues. The eclogue in general was a poem 
herd’s caien- of pastoral life, in which shepherds were the 
speakers, rural nature and love their usual 
themes. The poet might introduce matter personal to him- 
self or his friends, or might even discuss political affairs, but 
he kept the conventional framework of the pastoral. In 
Spenser’s fifth eclogue, for example, Archbishop Grindal 
figures as the good shepherd Algrind. The poems of The 
Shepherd’s Calendar show much variety in metre, for 
Spenser was clearly practising and experimenting. But 


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most remarkable among their literary qualities is the dic- 
tion, which he elaborated for himself with the design of 
giving a suggestion of antiquity and rusticity to his writ- 
ing. This curious predilection for obsolete or coined 
words is characteristic of the artificial style affected by 
the age. It is carried so far in The Faerie Queene that Ben 
Jonson could say of Spenser that he “writ no language.” 

In London Spenser was at the centre of the thrilling na- 
tional life of England. Through Leicester and Sidney he 
was introduced to the two leading political conceptions of 
the time, England’s leadership of the Protestant cause in 
Europe against Spain and Rome, and her expansion beyond 
the seas ; ideas that were the result partly of fantastic chiv- 
alry, and partly of a broad view of world politics. Finally, 
in Ireland he saw the English race in passionate 

T • n Spenser in 
conflict with opposing forces. 1 he chronically London and 

disturbed state of the country was aggravated by 
the intrigues of Philip of Spain and the Pope with the Irish 
chieftains, provoking those revolts which Lord Grey, strong 
in his belief that the Irish were the foes of God and of civ- 
ilization, put down with savage fury. Naturally, Spenser’s 
residence in Ireland, by bringing him into actual conflict 
with evil, stimulated his moral enthusiasm. Out of the 
conception of the greatness of England’s mission, which 
Spenser found in London and struggled to realize in 
Ireland, and out of his chivalric devotion to this ideal, 
and to the Queen who typified it, grew The Faerie Queene. 
It is the brightest expression of the ideal morality of the 
time ; and in a sense is the epic of the English race at one 
of the great moments of its history. 

Spenser and his contemporaries regarded moral purpose 
as essential to the greatest art ; and with Spenser this pur- 
pose took the form of dealing with the old problem of the 
Renaissance — individual character in relation to the state. 
As he explains in his introductory le'tter to Raleigh, The 
Faerie Queene was to show forth the character of an ideal 


80 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


knight, in twelve books, each devoted to one of the twelve 
qualities of perfect chivalry. This exposition of private 
virtue was to be followed by a second poem, which should 
The structure portray the virtues of the ideal knight as gov- 
Faerie he ernor. In fact, Spenser wrote only six books, 
Queeiie.” eac h 0 f twelve cantos ; and a fragment of a sev- 
enth. The first is given to the Red Cross Knight, who rep- 
resents Holiness ; the second to Sir Guyon, or Temperance ; 
the third to Britomarte, or Chastity ; the fourth to Cambel 
and Triamond, or Friendship ; the fifth to Sir Artegall, or 
Justice ; the sixth to Sir Calidore, or Courtesy. These 
knights, as we learn from Spenser's introductory letter, are 
despatched on their various quests by Gloriana, Queen of 
Fairyland. In the course of their adventures appears from 
time to time the perfect knight, Arthur, who is himself in 
search of the Faerie Queene. The thread of the narrative 
is much interrupted by episodes, some of which, like the 
account of the Marriage of the Thames and the Medway, 
in Book IV., are, perhaps, insertions, poems which were 
written separately and forced into the scheme of the great 
work when Spenser needed a canto to fill out his number. 
Thus it appears that the author took no very strict view of 
the structure of his poem. Moreover, the allegory, which 
should give unity to the whole, is inconsistent and compli- 
cated. It takes at times a political turn, and the characters, 
besides representing ideal qualities, refer directly to actual 
persons. Spenser explained : “ In that Faery Queene I 
meane glory in my generall intention, but in my particular 
I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our 
soveraine the Queene." Belphoebe and Britomarte also 
represent Elizabeth ; Arthur is Leicester ; the false lady 
Duessa is Mary Queen of Scots. In the fifth book the 
political state of Europe is presented at length, with Lord 
Grey as Artegall, France as Flourdelis, Henry IV. as Bur- 
bon, Holland as Beige, and Philip II. of Spain as Grantorto. 
This was but natural in an age in which politics were largely 


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81 


a matter of religion, and in which public and private con- 
duct, as typified by Sidney, Raleigh, and Essex, was still 
touched with something of the glamour of the chivalry 
which had passed away. 

The moral seriousness which underlies the poem marks the 
great difference between The Faerie Queene and its Italian 
prototype. Spenser, like Wyatt and Surrey, was content 
to go to school to Italy ; and he chose as the model for his 
great work the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. Both Ariosto 
and Spenser deal with chivalry ; but while Ariosto had 
merely the delight of the artist in the brilliant color which 
chivalry gave to life, with the easy contempt of the cynic 
for its moral pretensions, Spenser found in its persons and 
ideals a means of making goodness attractive. Ariosto pict- 
ures chivalric action because it is dramatic and Spenser and 
exciting, not because he believes in it. Spenser Ariosto - 
deals with action because he must. His world is one which, 
according to the Platonic conception, is capable of being 
brought into harmony with an ideal. Naturally, to him 
the virtues which make for the effectiveness of the indi- 
vidual and the progress of the race, are of supreme import- 
ance ; and the opposing vices, idleness, gluttony, lechery, 
and above all despair, are the objects of his fiercest attack. 

In details Spenser learned much from Ariosto ; many 
passages he wrote in avowed imitation. His prevailing 
difference is in the greater richness and elaboration of his 
style, of which the verse form of The Faerie Queene , the 
Spenserian stanza, is typical. Ariosto wrote in The Spense- 
ottava rima , that is, in stanzas of eight lines nanStanza 
rhyming thus : abababcc. Spenser on this suggestion 
built a more complicated stanza of his own, with rhymes 
arranged thus, ababbcbcc, the last line being an Alex- 
andrine, or line of six feet. The brilliancy of the inven- 
tion is shown by the fact that it adapts itself readily 
to the different demands of narrative, descriptive, and 
moral poetry; and that the poem # sustains itself 


82 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


throughout its great length with very little effect of 
sameness. 

For the rest, Spenser has the great gift of the poet, the 
power to create the illusion of a different world, a world 
of magic where the imagination and the senses are satisfied. 
With all his morality, Spenser shared in the rich sensuous 
life which the Renaissance had thrown open to men. This 
Spenser’s immediate reliance upon the senses is one of 
Art - the elements of reality which give greatness to 

his poem. The Faerie Queene is a long procession of fig- 
ures, brilliant, fantastic, or terrible, which singly or in 
groups pass across an ever varying, ever wonderful land- 
scape. And almost as marked as his feeling for form and 
color, is his use of sound. His sensitiveness of ear is shown 
by the melody of his verse, so constant yet so varied ; but 
there are also many passages in which he makes the music 
of nature an element of pleasure in his palace of art, not- 
ably in the description of the Bower of Bliss, in Book II., 
Canto XII. And more poignant sensuous appeal is not 
lacking. Altogether, Spenser has the resources of the whole 
world of sensation at command, and he never fails to 
heighten them with the illusions of his art. Of the color, 
the savor, the music of life, his poem is full, — only the 
color is brighter, the taste sweeter., the music grander, than 
any which it is given to mortal senses to know. 

And this world of imagined splendor is presented as the 
background of a steadily growing idea of righteousness, of 
heroic goodness. The union of the two elements, sensuous 
and moral, seems at times to involve a naive inconsistency. 
But Spenser belonged to an age when it seemed not im- 
possible that there should be some common ground between 
the spirit of the Reformation and that of humanism. He 

His Morality. was P erha P s a Puritan; but more fortunate 
than Milton, he came before Puritanism had 
narrowed its view of life to the single issue of salvation. 
There is indeed in Spenser, as in many of his contem* 


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83 


poraries, a note of melancholy, which suggests that the 
eternal contradiction of the joy of the present life by the 
threat of its hereafter, was not unheard. The flowers are 
already lightly touched by the frost. But this reminder 
that the time of free delight in the world of sense was so 
short, its sunshine so threatened by the clouds of Puri- 
tanism, makes its most signal product the more precious. 

Spenser's latent Puritanism can be traced in the reserve 
with which he usually treats passion. A franker, more un- 
restrained abandonment to sensuous feeling of every kind 
marks such poems as Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, 
and Marlowe's Hero and Leander , in which the tide of 
the Renaissance in England reaches its height. Marlowe 
died before he could complete the poem, which George Chap- 
was finished by George Chapman (1559-1634). man * 
Chapman was one of the most considerable literary men 
of the time. His appearance as a poet was somewhat late, 
his first important work being Ovid's Banquet of Sense, 
1595. Three years later he published the last four books 
of Hero and Leander. His famous translation of the Iliad 
he completed in 1611, and the Odyssey two years later. 
Long before this, in 1595, he had begun to write for the 
stage, his great work being a series of tragedies on sub- 
jects drawn from the history of France during the time of 
Catherine de Medici's influence. These, however, in spite 
of their dramatic form, are to be regarded as poems rather 
than plays. 

In his poetry, both original and translated, Chapman is 
rather a man of the succeeding age than an Elizabethan. In 
him the fulness and splendor of Elizabethan poetry, which 
had reached their height in Spenser, tend to elaboration, 
conceit, and obscurity, faults which unfortunately mar the 
greatest of his works, the translation of Homer. For the 
Iliad he chose the old English ballad metre, written in coup- 
lets, of which one line has six feet and the next seven. The 
sustained movement of this measure gives it a certain like- 


84 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ness to Homer’s hexameters ; but, on the other hand, its 
facility and informality tend to produce a jog-trot famil- 
iarity in place of Homers rapidity and nobility. More- 
chapman’s over, Chapman is deliberately indirect and 
Homer. fanciful, where Homer is direct and simple. 
Nevertheless, it was a circumstance almost as fortunate in 
its way for the English people as the series of happy acci- 
dents by virtue of which the English Bible became great 
literature, that the first translation of the noblest poetry 
of antiquity should have been made by one who, in spite 
of all his failings, was a true poet. 

Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and Marlowe’s and Chapman’s 
Hero and Leander, are perhaps the only long poems of the 
Elizabethan period which are still read. For the poets of 
that day, keenly interested as they were in artistic prob- 
lems, failed to solve the most essential of them ; they never 
other Poets se P arate ^ the Proper subject matter of poetry 
from that of prose. They gave verse form not 
only to history, but also to politics, philosophy, geography, 
and science. Accordingly many of them, in spite of gen- 
uine poetic gift, have all but disappeared from view, hope- 
lessly distanced in the race for immortality by reason of 
their bulk of unpoetical material. One of these leviathans 
is Michael Drayton (1563-1631). He devoted himself 
largely to history, his most characteristic work being his 
Baron's Wars , an account of the deposition of Edward 
II. and the subsequent fall of Mortimer. Drayton was 
capable of gaining a genuine inspiration from history, as is 
shown by his superb “ Ballad of Agincourt,” the ringing 
metre of which is preserved in Tennyson’s “ Charge of the 
Light Brigade.” Unfortunately he is known not by this 
spirited lyric, but as the author of Polyolbion , a huge 
poem in Alexandrines, containing a descriptive geography 
of England. Like Drayton, Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) 
served the historical muse, but he wrote also a poem called 
Musophilus, or “A general defence of all learning.” 


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85 


Among other curiosities of poetic treatment are William 
Warner’s Albion's England; Lord Brooke's Poems of 
Monarchy and Treatise on Religion ; Sir John Davies’s 
Nosce Teipsum, a poem on the immortality of the soul, and 
Orchestra , a description of the motions of the universe 
under the figure of dancing. 

It is not of these works, however, that we think when 
we speak of the glory of Elizabethan verse, but of the 
lyric quality which in nearly all the poets of the time flows 
somewhere as a stream of living water, making glad even 
the waste places of their greater works. Almost every 
poet of note published his cycle of love songs and sonnets ; 
besides Shakespeare's, Spenser's, and Sidney's sonnets, there 
are Constable's Diana, Daniel's Delia, Drayton's Idea, 
Lodge's Phyllis. There were also frequent publications 
of collections of songs by miscellaneous writers, sonnets and 
such as the Phoenix Nest, England's Helico7i, Lyncs - 
and the Poetical Rhapsody. The dramas of the period 
abound in lyrical interludes, and the stories are inter- 
rupted by eclogues and songs. Indeed it may be said that 
the writer, whether of prose or verse, who was altogether 
without the lyrical impulse, was an exception. 

Many of the fugitive lyrics of the period are of doubtful 
attribution or altogether anonymous, but of the songs that 
can be assigned to any one writer a large share belongs to 
Thomas Campion (1540-1613). Campion's verse is prac- 
tically and honestly adapted to musical require- Thomas 
ments, for the Elizabethan poet, more naive campion, 
than his successors, always conceived of a song as a thing 
to be sung. Like many of his contemporaries. Campion 
was stirred to rapture alike by sacred and profane love. 
Indeed, one of the peculiarities of the Elizabethan lyric 
poets is their mingling of sensuousness and piety, — the 
latter not induced by fear of death, but by a trust in the 
Creator as frank and honest as was their delight in the 
world which He had made. 


86 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


How common was the lyrical gift in the last years of 
Elizabeth’s reign, is shown by the number of men of action 
who were also poets. The group of literary courtiers, of 
whom Sidney was the chief, included a name as famous 
The courtly as his* that of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618). 
Poets - Raleigh’s place in literature belongs to him 
chiefly through his History of the World, one of the mon- 
uments of English prose in the next century ; but the frag- 
ment of a long poem, Cynthia, the sonnet introductory 
to The Faerie Queene, and various tags of verse like the 
reply to Marlowe’s “ Come live with me and be my Love,” 
and “ The Lie,” show that he possessed, in the words of 
a critic of the time, a vein of poetry “ most lofty, insolent, 
and passionate.” The tone of his poetry is on the whole 
singularly gloomy and bitter. His verses commemorate, 
for the most part, times of reaction and trouble in his 
checkered life, when he was thrown back by failure on the 
scepticism, distrust, and contempt, that were fundamental 
in his nature. 

Raleigh’s rival both in glory and in misfortune, the Earl 
of Essex, the brother of Sidney’s Stella, was himself a poet. 
Another member of the group of courtly poets was Sir 
Edward Dyer, a friend of Sidney’s, who is remembered as 
the writer of the lines, “My mind to me a Kingdom is.” 
Still another was the Earl of Oxford. Altogether it may 
be said that in courtly circles of the age, lyric poetry was 
the natural literary expression, much as the drama was the 
typical form of popular literature. 

The lyric and the drama must be counted as the great 
literary forms of the period, for these two represented 
truth to feeling and truth to life. Upon the rest of 
the literature of the sixteenth century, even including 
Spenser’s wonderful poem, rested a blight of artificiality. 
The age was in the main one of conscious learning from 
masters, classical and foreign ; of imitation, of uncertainty 
as to the principles and the uses of literature. The 


THE RENAISSANCE 


87 


writers of the time were hampered by uncritical selection 
of material, by the requirements of conventions, such as 
that which prescribed the pastoral, even by absurd theories 
such as that which tried to proscribe rhyme. Only in two 
directions, the lyric and the drama, did they win complete 
freedom, and in both they used it grandly. 








-O-vn^T v 


^r- 


CHAPTER V 

THE RENAISSANCE: THE DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE 

The drama, as has just been pointed out, was the most 
popular literary form of the Renaissance, as it was also the 
most powerful and spontaneous. It expressed, as no other 
literary product could have done, the manifold life of the 
Elizabethan age. Its chief glory is, of course, Shakespeare ; 
but the “school” of dramatists from which Shakespeare 
proceeded was the result of a steady growth, prolonged 
through nearly four centuries. To trace the English drama 
from the beginning, we must go back as far as the Norman 
conquest. 

One element in the development of the drama proceeded 
from the Norman love of shows and spectacles. When 
secular Borman kings were once firmly seated on 

sources of the the English throne, they gave full reign to 
their taste for splendid pageantry. If a royal 
wedding was to be celebrated, or a victorious monarch 
; ,* welcomed back from war, London was turned into a 

place of festival. At the entrance gate of the city, or at 
fixed places on the route to church or palace, elaborate 
structures were built, representing some mythical or 
allegorical scene,— the gods grouped upon Olympus, an 
armed St. George giving combat to a golden dragon, or 
nymphs and satyrs sporting in enchanted gardens. Some- 
times music was added, and the personators, by dialogue 
and action, gave welcome to the royal party. These 
pageants developed at the Renaissance into a special form 
of dramatic entertainment, the Masque. Meanwhile, by 
stimulating in the people a love of dramatic spectacle, they 
paved the way for regular drama. 

88 


THE RENAISSANCE 


89 


A much more important source of the drama, however, 
was the mass-service of the Catholic church, especially at 
Christmas-tide and Easter. The ordinary ser- 
vice at these times was enriched with extra source 0 ?? the 
ceremonies, such as burying the crucifix in a Drama ‘ 
tomb of the church on Good Friday and disinterring it on 
Easter morning, with monks or choir-boys to take the parts 
of the three Maries, the angel at the tomb, and the chorus 
of rejoicing angels in heaven. These little dramatic cere- 
monies gradually became detached from the service ; were 
moved from the church into the church-yard ; and later, 
when the crowds desecrated the graves in their eagerness to 
see and hear, were transferred to the public green or town 
square.- By Chaucer’s time these “miracle plays” or 
“ mysteries ” had passed to a large extent out of the hands 
of the priests, and had come under the control of the trade- 
guilds, who made use of them to celebrate their annual 
festival of Corpus Christi. Rivalry among the guilds, and 
the desire of each to possess a separate play, led to the set- 
ting forth of the whole Scripture story from Genesis to 
Revelations, in a series or cycle forming a great drama, 
of which the separate plays were, in a sense, only single 
acts. 

In order to gain some idea of the appeal made by the 
miracle plays to the audience for which they were in- 
tended, let us imagine ourselves for a moment The Miracle 
in a provincial English town at the beginning Plays - 
of the fifteenth century, on the morning of Corpus Christi 
day. Shortly after dawn, heralds have made the round of 
the city to announce the coming spectacle. The places 
where the cars or “pageants,” which form both stage and 
dressing-room, are to stop, are crowded with the motley 
population of a mediaeval city. The spectators of conse- 
quence occupy seats upon scaffolds erected for the purpose, 
or look on from the windows of neighboring houses, while 
the humbler folk jostle each other in the street. Soon 


90 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


the first pageant appears, a great box mounted on four 
wheels and drawn by apprentices of the masons* guild, 
which guild is charged with presenting the Creation of 
Eve and the Fall of Man. The curtains at the front and 
the side of the great box are drawn, revealing an upper 
compartment, within which the main action is to take 
place. On a raised platform sits enthroned a majestic 
person in a red robe, with gilt hair and beard, impersonat- 
ing the Creator. Before him lies Adam, dressed in a close- 
fitting leather garment painted white or flesh-color. The 
Creator, after announcing his intention of making for 
Adam a helpmeet, descends and touches the sleeper's side. 
Thereupon Eve rises through a trap-door, and Adam wakes 
rejoicing. Again the Creator ascends to his throne, and 
Adam withdraws to a corner of the pageant, leaving Eve 
to be tempted by a great serpent cunningly contrived of 
green and gold cloth, in which an actor is concealed. This 
monster, crawling upon the stage from below, harangues 
Eve with lengthy eloquence. Then follows the eating of 
the apple, and the coming of Cod's angels, with gilt hair, 
scarlet robes, and swords waved and ridged like fire, to 
drive the pair from the garden into the wilderness, that is, 
into the lower compartment of the pageant, which is now 
uncovered to view. A trumpeter advances before the car, 
and sounds a long note in token of the conclusion of the 
play. The 'prentices harness themselves to the car ; and 
it moves off to the next station, to be replaced by others. 
These represent in turn, Noah's Flood, given by the guild 
of water-merchants ; the Sacrifice of Isaac, given by the 
butchers' guild ; the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and so on 
in long procession, until the crowning spectacle of the 
Day of Judgment. The chief feature of spectacular in- 
terest in this last, is- Hell-mouth, a great dragon's jaw 
belching flame and smoke, into which lost souls, dressed 
in black and yellow particolor, are tossed by the Devil, 
— a most satisfactory character with a bright red beard, 


THE RENAISSANCE 


91 


a "hairy body, a hideous mask, horns, and a long forked 
tail. 

Crude and even grotesque as much of this seems, the 
miracle play was, to the men of the Middle Ages, a very 
impressive thing. It not only appealed to their religious 
natures and to their love of spectacle ; it also interested 
them profoundly from the human side. For the authors 
were free to embellish the biblical story with episodes drawn 
from the common life of their own day. Even when these 
added episodes took a broadly farcical turn, nobody was 
shocked, any more than by the imps and monsters which 
grinned at them from the solemn shadows of their cathe- 
drals. In the play of Noah’s Flood, the patriarch causes 
first the animals to enter the Ark, then his sons and daugh- 
ters-in-law ; but when he comes to his wife, she GermsofReg _ 
objects. She does not relish being cooped up ular Drama, 
without her “ gossips,” and leaving these amiable women to 
drown. Remonstrances at last proving fruitless, Noah 
resorts to the argument of blows, and drives his scolding 
helpmeet into the Ark, to the great delight of the crowd. 
In the play of Abraham and Isaac, the yearning love of the 
old man for his little son, and the sweet, trustful nature 
of the boy, are brought home to us in such a way as to 
intensify the pathos of the moment when Abraham makes 
ready, at the Lord’s command, to sacrifice the life which is 
dearest to him on earth. The pleading of the boy, the 
gradual overmastering of his fear of death by his pity for 
his father’s anguish and his solicitude for his mother’s 
grief, are rendered with touching truth. 

“ Therfor doo owr Lordes bydding, 

And wan I am ded, then prey for me : 

But, good fader, tell ye my moder no-thyng, 

Say that I am in another cunthre dwellyng.** 

In these episodes, and in many others which might be 
given, lie the germs of regular drama. Such humorous 




92 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

scenes as the quarrel of Noah and his wife, constitute in 
reality crude little comedies out of which regular comedy 
could readily grow. In such tragic scenes as the Sac- 
rifice of Isaac, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and the 
Crucifixion, the elements of noble tragedy were already 
present. 

The miracle plays attempted to set forth only a part of 
the teaching necessary to man’s salvation, namely that 
part contained in the history of Adam’s Fall, the redemp- 
tion through Christ, and the final Judgment. This was 
almost entirely theological ; it dealt with matters of belief. 
To complete this teaching there was needed some exposition 
of the ethical side of religion, which deals with matters of 
The Morality con duct ; and it was this ethical doctrine which 
p !ays. the “ Morality plays ” tried to bring home to 

men’s minds. By means of such personifications or ab- 
stractions as the World, the Flesh, Mankind, Mercy, Jus- 
tice, Peace, the Seven Deadly Sins, Good and Bad Angels, 
Gluttony, Covetousness, Old Age, and Death, the morality 
plays attempted to represent, in a graphic way which 
would appeal to popular audiences, the conflict between 
sin and righteousness for the possession of the human soul. 
The early Moralities have an earnestness of purpose, and a 
largeness of theme, which make them no unworthy supple- 
ment to the miracle cycles. Little by little, however, their 
character changed : the treatment was narrowed so as to 
include only a single aspect of man’s life ; the characters 
became less and less abstract *, and farcical matter was intro- 
duced to lighten the intolerably solemn tone. In these later 
moralities the character of Vice played a great part. He 
a was usually dressed in the costume of a court fool, and 
carried a sword of lath. His function was to attend upon 
the Devil, and to worry, trick, and belabor his master for 
the amusement of the crowd. The Vice survived in the 
fool of Shakespeare’s plays, though it is hard to recognize 
him in the philosophical Touchstone of As You Like It, 


THE RENAISSANCE 


93 


or the musical fool who sings such charming lyrics in 
Twelfth Night. 

Out of the moralities arose a species of play, various 
in its nature, known as the Interlude. The name took 
its origin from the practice observed in the The inter- 
houses of the great, of having these little dramas ludes - 
performed in the intervals of a banquet. In the old play 
of Sir Thomas More , a band of strolling players is an- 
nounced while Sir Thomas is dining, and they perform an 
interlude before him and his guests. Usually these pieces 
had little action, and required almost no stage-setting. 
For example. The Four P’s, of John Heywood, “ a newe 
and a very mery enterlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poty- 
cary and a Pedlar,” is nothing more than an amusing 
series of speeches by the four impersonators, in which they 
vaunt their several callings, make themselves out very 
arrant rascals indeed, and by so doing satirize the society 
which they represent. The Interludes, as a whole, afford 
a curious illustration of the growing intellectual curiosity 
of the Renaissance, as well as of the popular devotion to 
the dramatic form. 

Besides the Miracle plays, the Moralities, and the Inter- 
ludes, “ Robin Hood plays,” setting forth the merry ad- 
ventures of Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, and Maid RoWn Hood 
Marian, in Sherwood Forest, were popular; as andcimst- 
were also Christmas plays, or “mummings,” 
in which figured certain stock characters, such as Old 
Father Christmas, St. George and the Dragon, Old King 
Cole, and the Merry Andrew. The student will find in 
Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native, an account of 
the Christmas mummings as they still exist, or did exist 
until recent years, in remote corners of England. 

In addition to these native elements in the formation of 
the drama, there was an important influence from without. 
This influence was classical, and came from the great 
revival of interest in Latin literature, which marked the 


94 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


beginning of the Benaissance. It became the fashion in 
the fifteenth century for school-masters to present the 
comedies of Terence and Plautus on the stages of grammar 
schools, with the students as actors. Before 1541 Nicholas 
Udall, head-master of Eton, wrote for his boys 
influence: a play, modelled after Plautus, called Ralph 

Royster Royster , the first regular English 
comedy. The importance of Ralph Royster Royster, in 
furnishing English playwrights with an example of rapid 
dialogue and clear construction of plot, can hardly be 
over-estimated. The play is, however, an artificial pro- 
duction, with very little local color, or truth to English life. 
This objection cannot be brought against the next notable 
comedy. Gammer Gurton’s Needle, supposed to have been 
written by John Still, an Oxford Master-of-arts, about 
1566. Here the Latin model is still followed in formal 
particulars, but the main characters are manifestly studied 
from real sixteenth century peasants, and the background 
of English village life is given with much vivid realism. 
Gammer Gur ton's Needle is a great landmark in the his- 
tory of the drama in England, for it shows that English 
comedy had been able to learn from classical models the 
lesson of clear construction, and steady development of 
plot, without sacrificing that broad and realistic comic 
spirit which had found expression in the by-play of the 
miracles and moralities, and which was shortly to come to 
flower in such masterpieces of pure English humor as 
Dekker s Shoemakers’ Holiday, and the tavern scenes in 
Shakespeare's Henry IV. 


Upon tragedy, the classical influence was even greater, 
and the struggle on the part of the learned playwrights of 
The Classical the Universities, to impose the classical form 
Tragedy 6 .' u P on En S lish tragedy, was more sustained. The 
classic dramatist selected for emulation was 
Seneca. Between 1560 and 1581 ten tragedies of Seneca 
were freely translated. Coming into the hands of Eno-Hsh 


THE RENAISSANCE 


95 


playwrights, just when they were eagerly but blindly feel- 
ing their way toward a national type of drama, these plays 
could not fail to impress them much, perhaps all the more 
because the Senecan tragedy was directly opposed to that 
kind of drama to which the English people naturally 
inclined. Seneca’s plays have very little stage action ; 
important events, instead of being directly represented, are 
merely reported on the stage, by messengers or others. The 
tendency of English tragedy, on the other hand, was from 
the first to present everything bodily on - the stage, even 
the storming of cities, or battles between great armies, 
where the means at the disposal of the actors were laugh- 
ably inadequate to the demand. Latin drama, again, is 
usually careful to preserve unity of time and place, that 
is, to make all the action pass in a given locality, and to 
cover no more than the events of a single day. English 
playwrights, on the contrary, had no hesitation in shift- 
ing the scene to half a dozen different countries in the 
course of a single play ; and they thought nothing of in- 
troducing in the first act a child who grew to manhood 
in the second act, and in the third died and handed on 
the story, to be acted out by his sons and grandsons in 
the fourth and fifth. Classic drama also drew a very sharp 
line between comedy and tragedy, admitting no comic 
element into a serious play. The English drama, on the 
contrary, from the miracle plays down, set comedy side 
by side with tragedy ; it mingled the farcical with the 
august, the laughable with the pathetic, as they actually 
are mingled in life. 

The young University “wits” (as men of intellectual 
pretensions were then called), while they shared in the 
national enthusiasm for stage-plays, were many of them 
repelled by the crudities and absurdities of the native 
drama, emphasized as these were by the meagre stage- 
setting. They wished, therefore, to force the elegant but 
cold Senecan model upon the public. They found a 


96 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

powerful champion in Sir Philip Sidney, who, in his 
Defence of Poesie, heaped unsparing ridicule upon the 
native playwrights of his day. In 1561, two young gentle- 
men of the Inner Temple, Thomas Norton and Thomas 
Sackville, presented before Queen Elizabeth a play called 
Gorboduc , or Ferrex and Porrex , which was accepted as 
aTTind of manifesto on the part of the classicists, and as an 
example of what could be done in handling a subject from 
British legend, on the lines laid down by Seneca. Gorbo- 
duc has a chorus, made up of four old men of Britain ; 
messengers to report the action, almost all of which takes 
place off the stage ; and long epic and lyric passages — 
what the French call tirades — to take the place of stage- 
action. It is a stately production, and deserves venera- 
tion as the first regular tragedy written in English. That 
it had a great influence upon the native drama, just 
struggling into consciousness of itself, is evidenced by 
the continual efforts made by the playwrights of the 
next twenty or thirty years, to force their stubborn, over- 
grown material into some semblance of the neat classic 
form. 

In the end, the native form won the day. It had on its 
side not only long tradition, but the overwhelming weight 
of popular taste. It was infinitely better suited to the 
robust imagination of the men of the English Renaissance, 
eager for excitement and craving strong sensations. 
Nevertheless, the apprenticeship of English playwrights 

to a foreign master, brief and incomplete 

Effect of the _ . ® . _ _ _ 1 

Classical in- though it was, was invaluable. It taught 

them to impose some restraint upon the riot of 
their fancy ; it showed them the beauty and artistic 
necessity of good structure ; in a word, it brought form 
out of chaos. Nor did the influence wholly die, even when 
the battle had gone once for all in favor of the “ romantic ” 
drama. Marlowe, whose genius was intensely romantic, 
shows abundant traces of it ; and the “ Chorus ” of King 


THE RENAISSANCE 


97 


Henry V., Romeo and Juliet , and Pericles, is a slender 
remnant of the Senecan chorus. Ben Jonson, with a 
haughty disregard for popular applause, continued to 
wage a single-handed battle in favor of classicism, from 
the beginning of his career until twenty years after Shake- 
speare’s death, when the Elizabethan drama was drawing 
near the end of its magnificent course. 

We now stand on the threshold of that wonderful sixty 
years (1580-1640) during which this course was run. As 
has been shown in the last chapter, England 

1 ° The Great 

found herself, at the beginning of this period, Dramatic 

quickened by three of the most potent influ- 
ences which can affect the life of a nation : widespread 
intellectual curiosity ; the beginnings of an intense relig- 
ious ferment ; and the pride of suddenly discovered 
national strength. The young wits who came up from 
the Universities to London, tingling with the imagin- 
ative excitement of the age, seized upon the popular 
theatre, crude though it then was, as promising to make 
possible a form of art concrete enough, flexible enough, 
exciting enough, to satisfy the life of the day with a re- 
flection of its own diversity and splendor. The marvel- 
lously swift and many-sided dramatic development of the 
next thirty years (1580-1610), abundantly testifies to the 
sound instinct of the men who saw in the theatre the 
best instrument for the expression of their swarming 
fancies. 

The Elizabethan drama has been called “ the drama of 
rhetoric,” and from one point of view the description is 
exact. Not only were dramatists compelled by the meagre 
stage-setting to indulge in long passages of description and 
soliloquy, but they also loved rhetoric for its own sake, as did 
their audiences. Nothing is more curious to our modern 
ears than the endless quibble and word-play, the elaborate 
conceits, the sounding and far-fetched phrase, in which all 
the Elizabethan dramatists, and kShakespeare as much as 


98 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


any, delighted to clothe their thought. Lyly’s Euphues 
(see page 70) had a marked influence upon the early 
Elizabethan drama, both for good and evil. The taste 
for artificial language which it reflected and fostered, filled 
the early drama with passages which are intolerably man- 
nered; but, on the other hand, it refined poetic diction, 
and saved the drama from the rudeness by which a form 
of art so popular in its appeal and so humble in its origin, 
was naturally threatened. 

As a dramatist Lyly occupies a peculiar position among 
Shakespeare’s predecessors. He wrote, not for the regular 
Lyiy and dramatic companies, but for companies of child 
Actors 114 actors. These were choir-boys, one company 
attached to St. Paul’s Cathedral and known 
as the “ Children of Paul’s,” the other attached to the 
Queen’s chapel at Whitehall and known as the “ Children 
of the Chapel Royal.” To these child companies Lyly’s 
tone and matter were admirably adapted. His plays are 
for the most part graceful adaptations of classic myths, so 
turned as to have a bearing upon some contemporary hap- 
pening at court, yet moving always in an atmosphere of 
quaint and dreamlike unreality. Endymion is an elaborate 
compliment to Queen Elizabeth, who appears in the play 
in the character of Cynthia, the virgin huntress. The 
Woman in the Moon is a veiled satire upon women in gen- 
eral, and Elizabeth in particular, written after Lyly had 
been soured by years of fruitless seeking after court favor. 
Through the plays are scattered delightful lyrics, which 
Lyly was perhaps especially tempted to insert, by the clear 
voices of the child players. 

The child actors, for whom Lyly wrote, played almost 
The Regular exclusively in private — at court, or in the 
andTheir 68 houses of the nobility. But the regular corn- 
Theanes. pan ies had a i rea( ty begun to establish them- 
selves in the suburbs of London, and to erect permanent 
theatres. The first of these play-houses, known simply as 


the renaissance 


99 


Hie Theatre, was built in Finsbury Fields, to the north 
of the city, by James Burbage, in 1576. It was at this 
play-house that Shakespeare first found employment. 
Burbage's company, on the destruction of The Theatre, 
built the Globe, on the south bank of the Thames ; and 
here, on the Bankside, other places of theatrical entertain- 
ment rapidly sprang up. After a time the actors became 
bold enough to push into the city itself. Burbage built 
the Blackfriars, as a winter theatre. A rival company 
built the Fortune, also in the city limits. By the end of 
the century, eleven theatres existed in the city and in the 
free lands or “ liberties " adjoining. 

Performances took place usually at three in the after- 
noon, and were announced by the hanging out of a flag 
and the blowing of trumpets. The theatres were round or 
octagonal structures, unroofed except for a shed or canopy 
over the stage. The winter theatres, such as the Blackfri- 
ars, were entirely roofed in. The stage extended out into the 
body of the house, was open on three sides, and was suffi- 
ciently elevated so that the main bulk of the audience, stand- 
ing on the bare ground which formed the floor or pit of the 
theatre, could have a fair view. Persons who could afford to 
pay a higher price than the “ groundlings," took advantage 
of the boxes built round the pit ; and young gallants, for 
an extra fee, could have seats upon the stage itself, where 
they smoked their pipes, peeled oranges, cracked nuts, and 
often interfered with the performance by chaffing a poor 
actor, or by flirting ostentatiously with the fair occupant 
of a neighboring box. In accordance with the luxurious 
taste of the age in dress, the costumes of the actors were 
often very rich. All women's parts were played by boys ; 
actresses were not seen in England until after the Restora- 
tion. The stage-setting was of the simplest, a change of 
scene being indicated often merely by a placard, or at most 
by a roughly painted piece of paste-board and a few stage 
properties. A tree and a bench did duty for a garden ; a 


100 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 






A 


wooden cannon and a paste-board tower indicated a siege. 
This meagreness of stage-setting, so far from being a mis- 
fortune, was in no small measure responsible for the liter- 
ary greatness of the Elizabethan drama ; for it threw the 
dramatist back upon vivid poetic expression, as the only 
means of stimulating the imagination of his audience and 
of preserving the dramatic illusion. 

While Lyly was at the height of his vogue, during the 
late eighties of the sixteenth century, a group of young 
dramatists were coming to the front, whose appeal was not 
to the court but to the people, and whose plays were writ- 
ten for the popular theatres just described. The most im- 
portant of these dramatists were Christopher Marlowe, 
Robert Greene, and George Peele, with Marlowe an undis- 
puted leader. The non-dramatic work of these men has 
already been mentioned (see pages 75 and 83). Greene was 
by natural gift a prose romancer, Peele a lyric poet, and 
at least half of Marlowe’s genius was of an epic kind. But 
the tendency of the age was so overwhelmingly in favor of 
drama, that all three, in common with many of their fel- 
lows, were diverted into the channel of dramatic expres- 
sion ; and Marlowe achieved in this not wholly sympathetic 
medium all but the highest distinction. 

Christopher Marlowe, one of the most striking figures of 
the English Renaissance, is the true founder of the popu- 
Mariowe l ar drama, though he was himself an 

outgrowth of the long period of preparation 
which we have been traversing. He was born in 1564, two 
months before Shakespeare, in the old cathedral town of 
Canterbury. His father was a shoemaker ; the boy was 
sent to Cambridge by a patron, who had noticed his quick 
parts. He graduated at nineteen ; and four years later 
(1587) he astonished London with his first play, Tambur- 
laine , which he brought out with the Lord Admiral’s Men, 
the rival company to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, whom 
Shakespeare had joined a short time before. 


THE RENAISSANCE 


101 


In the brief and haughty prologue prefixed to Tambur- 
laine, Marlowe not only announced clearly the His “Pro- 
character of that play, but hinted at the pro- gramme.” 
gramme which he proposed to carry out in the future : — 

“ From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits 
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, 

We’ll lead you to the stately tents of war 
Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine 
Threatening the world with high astounding terms 
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.” 

j) The “ jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,” is a sheer at 

the use of rhyme and awkward tumbling lines of four- \^J 
teen syllables, which was customary with the popular play- 
wrights of the time. For this “ jigging vein ” he proposes to , 

substitute blank verse, which, though it had been employed 
previously by Sackville and Norton, in Gorboduc, had not 
established itself. It is a sign of Marlowe's artistic insight l 
that he should have recognized at once the value of blank 
verse for dramatic poetry; and we can see, beneath the { 
surface of his words, a proud consciousness of his own power 
over this almost untried form of verse. Out of it he built 
that “ mighty line,” which astounded and fascinated his 
contemporaries ; and his success with it fixed it firmly as “ 
the vehicle of serious drama henceforth. By his sneer at 
the “ conceits ” that “clownage keeps in pay,” Marlowe 
showed his determination not to pander to the pit by means 
of vulgar comedy and horse-play, but to treat an elevated 
theme with seriousness. By the “ stately tents of war,” to 
which he promises to lead his hearer, he typified the dig- 
nity and largeness of scope which he proposed to give to all 
his work. By the last three lines of the prologue, he fore- 
shadowed his plan of giving unity to his dramas, by mak- 
ing them revolve around some single great personality, 
engaged in some titanic struggle for power ; and likewise 
of treating this struggle with the rhetorical splendor, the 




"-1 


102 


A HISTOEY OF ENGLISH LITEEATUBE 


“high astounding terms,” without which Elizabethan 
drama is now inconceivable. This programme he carried 
out in the main with consistency. 

Tamburlaine is a pure “hero-play.” The Scythian 
shepherd conquers, one after another, the kingdoms of the 
East, forcing kings to harness themselves to his 
His piays. and carrying with him a great cage in 

which a captive emperor is kept like a wild beast. The 
huge barbaric figure of Tamburlaine is always before our 
eyes, and the action of the play is only a series of his 
triumphs. His character, half-bestial, half-godlike in its 
remorseless strength and confidence, dominates the imagi- 
nation like an elemental force of nature, and lends itself 
admirably to those “high astounding terms,” which fill 
whole pages of the play with thunderous monologue. 

Doctor Faustus , Marlowe’s second work, is also a hero- 
play, and is cast on even larger lines. It is a dramatized 
story of the life and death of a mediaeval scholar, who 
sells his soul to the devil, in return for a life of power and 
pleasure. It embodied, in another form, the same aspira- 
tion after the unattainable, which Tamburlaine had typi- 
fied ; and the story involved large questions of human will 
and fate, such as an imagination like Marlowe’s loves to 
grapple with. It can hardly be said that the poet lived up 
to the possibilities of his subject. The play, as it has 
come down to us, is disfigured by comic passages of a 
coarse and tasteless sort, those very “conceits of clown- 
age” which Marlowe had formerly declared war against. 
But even where the workmanship is poor there is always 
something imposing in the design ; and certain passages 
have hardly been surpassed for power and beauty. When 
Mephistopheles raises from the dead the spirit of Helen 
of Troy, Eaustus utters one rapturous exclamation, 

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilion ? ’ ’ 


THE RENAISSANCE 


103 


And on his death-bed he starts np with the cry, 

‘ 4 Lo, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament ! ” 

— three lines which would alone serve to stamp Marlowe as 
of the company of imperial poets. 

Marlowe’s third play. The Jeiv of Malta , is again a study 
of the lust of power, — this time the power bestowed by 
great riches. Barabbas, the old Jewish merchant of Malta, 
is the first vigorous sketch, of which Shakespeare was to 
make in Shylock a finished masterpiece. The first two acts 
are conceived on a large scale, and carefully worked out ; 
but after these Marlowe seems again to have fallen from 
his own ideal, and to have worked hastily and insincerely. 
Raw horrors accumulate on horror’s head, and the play de- 
generates into melodrama of the goriest kind. Neverthe- 
less it shows a remarkable advance over Tamburlaine and 
Doctor Faustus, in the knitting-together of cause and 
effect. Marlowe’s growth in dramatic technique is still 
more strikingly apparent in his last play, Edivard II. This 
is unquestionably his masterpiece, so far as play-making 
goes, though for the very reason that it discards rhetorical 
monologue for the rapid dramatic interchange of thought, 
it contains fewer quotable passages of pure poetry than 
any of the others. 

Marlowe was .killed in 1593, at the age of twenty-nine. 
There is something in the meteor-like suddenness of his ap- 
pearance in the skies of poetry, and in the swift flaming of 
his genius through its course, that seems to make inevi- 
table his violent end. He sums up for us the Renaissance 
passion for life, sleepless in its search and daring in its grasp 
after the infinite in power, in knowledge, and in pleasure. 

Robert Greene was probably encouraged to write for the 
stage by Marlowe’s success with Tamburlaine. G reene 
Greene’s best plays are Friar Bacon and Friar 
Bungay and James IV. The first of these has some 
country scenes, grouped about the character of Margaret, 


104 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


the fair maid of Fressingfield, which are in a fine healthy 
English tone. James IV. has a clear and coherent develop- 
ment, unusual at this stage of the drama ; one of its motifs, 
that of the persecuted woman who flees to the forest in the 
disguise of a page, was destined to become immensely pop- 
ular in the later romantic drama, and to be used over 
and over again, with endless variations, by Shakespeare and 
Fletcher. 

George Peele, like Greene, began his career by non-dra- 
matic writing. His most characteristic early work con- 
sists of poems written for ceremonial occasions. 
One of these, “A Farewell to the Famous and 
Fortunate Generals of our English Forces,” written on the 
departure of Drake and Norris, on the expedition to Portu- 
gal in 1589, is full of the new national spirit. Some of the 
lines have a superb ring of exultation and pride : — 

“You fight for Christ and England’s peerless queen, 
Elizabeth the wonder of the world, 

Over whose throne the enemies of God 

Have thundered 

O ten times treble happy men, that fight 
Under the cross of Christ and England’s queen ! ” 

This passage well illustrates Peele’s peculiar gift as a poet, 
that of making his lines kindle as they go. His best play, 
David and Bethsabe, is, considered merely as a play, poor 
enough ; but it is full of passages, usually only a few lines 
long, which seem to take fire before a reader’s eyes, and 
to burn with the softest yet most intense flame of the 
imagination. David and Bethsabe may be regarded as a 
late type of the miracle-play, stripped of its sacred sig- 
nificance, and saturated with the sensuous grace and rich 
color of the Renaissance. Another play of Peele’s, The 
Old Wives' Tale , is famous as having furnished Milton 
with the ground-work of Comus. It is a very crude but a 
very charming play ; a sort of dramatized nursery tale of 


THE RENAISSANCE 


105 


giants, bewitched maidens, buried lamps, and magic wells, 
put forth with the occasional poetic grace and the aimless 
dreamy digression proper to the species. 

Peele was out of place in drama, and never succeeded in 
writing a really good play. But his contribution to the 
development of dramatic style was nevertheless great. He 
succeeded in keeping much of the strength of Marlowe’s 
“ mighty line,” while infusing into it a new tender- 
ness and soft play of color. If Marlowe furnished the 
strength, Peele as surely furnished the sweetness, which 
went to make up the incomparable blend of Elizabethan 
drama at its great moment. 




* ^4 


Urrd 


I . fi 



CHAPTER VI 


THE RENAISSANCE : SHAKESPEARE 


William Shakespeare was born on or about the 24th of 
April, 15G4, in the village of Stratford. He was the third 
child of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. His mother 
Shakespeare’s was gentle blood, and was possessed of some 
Early Life. wealth by inheritance. His father, though a 
man of consideration in the village, was of lower station, a 
tanner and glover by trade. Until the age of fourteen 
the boy attended the Stratford grammar school, where 
f he picked up the “ s mall Latin and less Greek,” to 
which his immensely learned friend Ben Jonson rather 
scornfully refers. The better part of his education, a 
wonderfully deep and sure insight into Nature, and a 
wide acquaintance with the folk-lore of his native district, 
he doubtless began to acquire in boyhood, by rambles 
through the meadows and along the streams of Warwick- 
shire, stopping to chat with old crones over their cottage 
fires, or to listen to ploughmen as they took their nooning. 
Only a few miles away was the picturesque town of War- 
wick, with its magnificent castle, to set him dreaming of 
the past. Within an easy day’s walk lay Kenilworth Castle, 
the seat of Elizabeth’s favorite, Leicester ; and the historic 
town of Coventry, where one might still see miracle-plays 
performed on certain festival days. Travelling companies 
of actors visited Stratford two or three times a year, and had 
to apply to Shakespeare’s father for leave to play. At their 
performances young Shakespeare was doubtless sometimes 
present, drinking in his first impressions of the fascinating 
world of the stage. In these and other ways his mind 


106 


THE RENAISSANCE 


107 


found the food it needed ; and stored up many a brave 
image, which it should afterward evoke in the thick air 
of a crowded London theatre. 

About 1578 the fortunes of his father began to decline, 
and Shakespeare was withdrawn from school. In spite of 
the rapidly failing prosperity of the family, he was married 
at eighteen to Ann Hathaway, a young woman eight years 
his senior, the daughter of a peasant family of Shottery, 
near Stratford. That the marriage was hasty and unfortu- 
nate has been conjectured from the general course of Shake- 
speare’s life, as well as from various passages in the plays, 
which seem to have an autobiographic color. Certain it is 
that some time between 1585 and 1587, he left Stratford to 
seek his fortune in the capital, and that until the close of 
his life he returned to his native town only at rare intervals. 
The immediate cause of his leaving is said by doubtful 
tradition to have been the anger of Sir Thomas Lucy, a 
local magnate, over a deer-stealing prank in which Shake- 
speare and other wild young blades of the village had en- 
gaged. 

Outside the walls of London to the north, not far from 
where the road from Shakespeare’s country entered the 
purlieus of the capital, stood the oldest of the Shakespeare 
London play-houses, called simply The Theatre. in London - 
It had at the head of its company the famous actor James 
Burbage. Whether from accident or set intention, Shake- 
speare soon found himself connected with Burbage’s com- 
pany, where he made himself indispensable as actor, and 
as retoucher of old plays. He continued with Burbage’s 
company, as actor, playwright, and stockholder, when The 
Theatre was pulled down, and rebuilt as the Globe on the 
south bank of the Thames. 

Of the external facts of Shakespeare’s life in London we 
know few, and those few of small importance. Early in 
his career he was attacked by Robert Greene, who, in a 
deathbed exhortation to Marlowe, Peele, and others, 


108 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

called him “an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, 
that . . . supposes he is as well able to bombast 

out a blank verse as the rest of us." The publisher of 
Greene's pamphlet afterward printed a formal apology, 
testifying to young Shakespeare's worth and amiability. 
We know of his friendship with AYilliam Herbert, Earl of 
Pembroke, and with the Earl of Southampton ; of his 
friendly rivalry, in art and talk, with “rare Ben Jonson," 
the second dramatist of the age ; of his careful conduct of 
his business affairs, and of his popularity as a playwright. 
Except for these few gleams of light, his external life is 
wrapped in mystery ; and the very breadth and dramatic 
greatness of his plays prevent us from drawing any but 
the broadest inferences concerning his personal history. 

The foundation of Shakespeare's modest fortune is 
thought to have been laid by a gift from his friend and 
patron, the young Earl of Southampton, to whom he 
dedicated his youthful poems, Venus and Adonis and 
Lucrece ; but it was mainly by his earnings at the Globe 
and Blaekfriars' theatres that he was able to reinstate his 
parents in their old position of burgherly comfort, and to 
gain for himself a patent of gentility, and the possession of 
the best homestead in his native village, with broad acres 

r t t of land to add to its dignity. Hither, at the 
Stratford; age of fifty, he retired, to spend the remainder 
of his life in country quietude, with his wife 
and his unmarried daughter Judith. He died in 1616, at 
the age of fifty-two ; and was buried in the old church by 
the Avon, where thousands of pilgrims now go each year 
to read the words on his tomb beseeching men to let his 
dust lie quiet in its grave. 

Shakespeare began his dramatic work, as has been said, 
by retouching old plays ; of this early work the three parts 
of Henry VI. remain as an interesting specimen of his first 
apprentice efforts. He soon fell under the fascination of 
Marlowe's style, and produced Titus Andronicus, in a vein 


THE RENAISSANCE 


109 


of raw horror calculated to outdo Marlowe at his hardest 
and cruellest. Of Marlowe’s influence we shall have occa- 
sion to speak again, when we consider Richard 
III. ; but the plays which immediately follow Period of ex- ‘ 
i Titus Andronicus do not show a trace of it. penment * 

The first of these, Love’s Labour’s Lost , sprang from Shake- 
speare’s interest in the fanciful, artificial language to 
which Lyly’s Eupliues had given a tremendous vogue, in 
Elizabeth’s court and among all the young fashionables 
of London. Although he could later ridicule Euphuistic 
speech, he here becomes himself entangled in its meshes. 
He had not yet gained skill enough to handle his satire 
with easy mastery. His next play, the Comedy of Errors, 1 
was an experiment in still another direction. It is an 
adaptation of a Latin comedy, the Menaechmi of Plautus. 
The farcical plot turns upon the resemblance of twin 
brothers, in whose service are two clownish servants, also 
counterparts of each other. Shakespeare handles the 
intrigue with a skill which shows how rapidly he was 
growing in stage technique. Instead of following up his 
success in this kind, however, he turned immediately to s 
try a new experiment, in the Tivo Gentlemen of Verona. 
This is a dramatized romance, adapted freely from one of 
the popular “ novels ” or love-romances of his day. The 
play, thin and youthful as it is, has more than a touch of 
real Shakespearean grace. The scene (Act II., sc. III.) in 
which Launce, the clown, upbraids his dog for not joining 
in the family distress at his departure, is a piece of glo- 
rious nonsense ; and the famous lyric “Who is Silvia?” 
is the first of many exquisite songs which shed their 
jewelled light through the plays. 

Shakespeare had now made rapid experiments in four 
directions : in Henry VI. he had essayed the chronicle- 
or history-play, in Titus Andronicus the melodrama, in 
Love’s Labour’s Lost the “conversation-play,” in the Two 
Gentlemen of Verona the dramatic romance. He brought 


110 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


this first period of his work to a close with two more 
efforts, wholly different in kind from the preceding and 
from each other. These also are experimental, in the sense 
that they enter realms before unknown to drama ; but 
Earliest both * n conception and execution they are 
Masterpieces, finished masterpieces. * A Midsummer Night’s 
Dream and Romeo and Juliet* show that in several direc- 
tions. Shakespeare had now passed beyond his apprentice 
state, and had attained the rank of master-craftsman. The 
first of these plays is thought to have been written in 
1593 ; the second, though it did not receive its final form 
until 1596 or 1597, was probably produced before the 
poet’s thirtieth year. 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is thought to have been 
written for some nobleman’s marriage-festival, to take the 
place of the masque or allegorical pageant tradi- 

Midsummer ® mi x ° - 

Night’s ( tional upon such occasions, lheseus, duke ol 
Athens, and his bride Hippolyta,in whose lofty 
figures the noble bridal pair are perhaps shadowed forth, 
represent the sentiment of love in its serene and lofty mood. 
About this central pair revolve three other groups, repre- 
senting love in its fanciful and burlesque aspects. The 
first group is made up of the Athenian youths and maidens 
astray in the moonlight woods, loving at cross-purposes, 
and played upon by Puck with a magic liquor, which adds 
confusion to confusion in their hearts. The second group 
consists of the fairy-queen Titania and her lord Oberon ; 
and here the treatment of the love-theme becomes deli- 
ciously satiric, as it depicts the passion of the dainty queen 
for bully Bottom transformed into an ass. In the third 
group, that of the journeymen actors who present the 
“ tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe : 
very tragical mirth,” the love-theme is modulated into the 
most absurd burlesque. Then, poured over all, holding 
these diverse elements in unity, is the atmosphere of mid- 
summer moonlight, and the aerial poetry of the fairy world. 


THE RENAISSANCE 


11 ] 


A Midsummer Night's Dream, like the plays which pre- 
ceded it, treats of love in a light and fanciful way, never 
more than half in earnest and usually frankly trivial. 
In Romeo and Juliet love ceases to be a mere 

“Romeo and 

sentiment, to be played with and jested over; Juliet.” 
it becomes a passion, tragical with the issues of life and 
death. Here for the first time Shakespeare was really in 
earnest. The two young lives are caught in a fiery whirl- 
wind, which .sweeps them through the rapturous hours of 
their new love, to their death together in the tomb of 
Juliet's ancestors. The action, instead of being spread 
over months, as in the poem from which Shakespeare took 
the plot, is crowded into five days ; and from the first 
meeting of the lovers until the end, a sense of hurry, now 
ecstatic, now desperate, keeps the passion mounting in a 
swift crescendo. Not only is the play great as a “ tragedy 
of fate" in the Greek sense, but in the drawing of char- 
acter the poet now for the first time works with unerring 
deftness and power. The vulgar, kind-hearted nurse, the 
witty, hair-brained Mercutio, the vacillating yet stubborn 
Capulet, the lovers themselves, so sharply differentiated in 
the manner of their love, all these and a dozen minor 
figures have the very hue and gesture of life. 

Shakespeare now, at thirty years of age, turned back to 
the kind of play with which he had begun, and proceeded 
to throw into dramatic form the rough masses En g llsh His . 
of English history which he found in the chron- toncal Plays, 
icles of Holinshed. In Richard 111.) again working under 
Marlowe's influence, he produced a portrait of elemental 
energy and evil pride, which the creator of Tamburlaine and 
Faustus might have mistaken for hi^ own handiwork. 
This he followed up with Richard 11. and King John) the 
latter famous for the tenderly drawn and touching figure 
of the little prince, Arthur ; it has been thought that in 
writing the moving passages where Arthur begs for his life, 
Shakespeare perhaps had in mind his own son, Hamnet, 


112 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

who had just died at the age of eleven. As Shakespeare 
went on, he gained steadily in power to handle his ma- 
terial. The three plays just mentioned are workmanlike 
and vigorous in increasing degree, but not great. The 
three plays which close the series, on the other hand, while 
not among the poet's supreme masterpieces, contain some 
of his most remarkable work. These are Henry IV. (in 
two parts) and Henry V. ^ 

In planning Henry IV. Shakespeare hit uppn the admir- 
able notion of interspersing the somewhat dry historic 
matter with scenes from the London tavern life 
and “ Henry of his own day, — a life full of racy humors fitted 
to afford the desired comic relief. As the genius 
loci of the tavern world, he created Falstaff, the fat old 
knight who helps Prince Hal (afterward King Henry V.) to 
sow his wild oats. The immortal figure of Falstaff holds the 
prime place among the creations of Shakespeare's humor, 
as royally as Hamlet holds his “intellectual throne." In 
Henry V. we see Shakespeare in a new and very engaging 
light ; it is, indeed, hardly a figure of speech to say that 
we see the poet, — for in this play, as nowhere else in his 
dramas, does he speak with the voice of personal enthusi- 
asm. The manly, open character of the king, and his 
splendid victories over the French, made him a kind of 
symbol of England's greatness, both in character and in 
achievement. The poet transfers to the battle of Agin- 
court the national pride which had been kindled by the 
defeat of the Armada ; and makes his play a great pasan of 
praise for the island kingdom. In the “ choruses " intro- 
ducing the several acts, and even in the speeches of the 
characters themselves, he utters in lyric strophes an over- 
whelming patriotic emotion. 

The schooling through which Shakespeare put himself 
in writing the English historical plays was arduous. He 
had to teach to the populace of his time the history of 
their country ; it was therefore incumbent upon him to 


THE RENAISSANCE 


113 


use the material without gross falsification, and at the 
same time to give it life and artistic form. To do this in 
the strictest of all poetic media, the drama, and Effect of Eng _ 
with the meagre resources of the Elizabethan pfa y f \ s n torical 
stage, was a task which strengthened his art for Iha^speare 1 ’! 
the work he had still to do ; especially for the Art * 
four great tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King 
Lear, which mark the height of his achievement. Before 
writing these, however, he seems, if we are justified in de- 
ducing his personal mood from the mood of his work, to 
have passed through a period of unbroken serenity and 
high spirits. At any rate, the fruit of these years was a 
succession of joyous comedies, touched with the golden 
light of love and romance. 

Even while writing the histories, he had found time to 
write The Merchant of Venice'? and two brisk farces. The 
Taming of the Shrew Tmd The Merry Wives of Windsor . > 
The last, said to have been written at the request of Queen 
Elizabeth, who desired to see Falstaff in love, is a hasty 
and rather perfunctory piece of work, written mostly ' 
in prose. It is quite otherwise with the first-mentioned 
play, which served as a relief from the work of making 
drama out of chronicle-history. In The Merchant of Venice 
we see for the first time the presiding presence of the moral 
sense, and a fundamental seriousness, betraying itself even 
in the deeper and more religious harmonies of the verse, 
which mark the poet's advance over the Midsummer 
Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. 

In Portia Shakespeare drew his second great portrait of 
a woman. She is an elder sister of Juliet, less vehement, 
with a larger experience of life, a stronger and The “ Mer- 
more practised intellect. In the three com- ice ” and the 
edies which now followed, he drew three other ed/e°s y .^ S C °™ 
unforgettable female portraits, Beatrice of Much Ado 
about Nothing, Rosalind of As You Like It, and Viola of 
Twelfth Night f And, grouped around them, what a holiday 


114 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


company of delightful figures! — Benedict, “the married 
man ” trying in vain to parry the thrusts of Beatrice’s nim- 
ble wit ; the philosophical Touchstone, shaking his head 
over the country-wench Audrey, because the gods have not 
made her poetical; the meditative Jacques (a first faint 
sketch, it has been said, of Hamlet), with his melancholy 
“ compounded of many simples” ; Sir Toby Belch, cham- 
pion of the ancient doctrine of cakes and ale, and ginger 
hot in the mouth ; the unspeakable Sir Andrew Ague- 
cheek ; the solemn prig and egotist Malvolio, smirking 
and pointing at his cross-garters ; Maria, “youngest wren 
of nine”; and the clown Feste, with his marvellous haunt- 
ing songs. All these and dozens more move here in a 
kaleidoscope of intense life, spiritualized by an indescrib- 
able poetic radiance. 

These three comedies were written between 1598 and 
1601, that is between the poet’s thirty -fourth and his thirty- 
change in the seventh year. The last of them. Twelfth 
work :°the S Night, has been called his “ farewell to mirth.” 
Sonnets. What happened to him at this time, or whether 
anything external and tangible happened, we shall never 
know. Certain it is, however, that in eight tragedies, four 
of them of titanic size, and in two so-called comedies, almost 
I tjJlz z : . more bitter and gloomy than the tragedies, he sounded 
one after another the depths of human baseness, sin, and 
^ suffering. The only hint that we have of the nature of that 

valley and shadow through which Shakespeare seems to have 
passed, is found in his Sonnets. These were not published 
until 1609, after this period was over ; and we know that 
some of them were written before 1598, when the poet’s 
spiritual harmony, as reflected in his plays, was still undis- 
turbed. There is nothing, however, in either of these 
facts to disprove the hypothesis that those sonnets in which 
we see the most acute suffering expressed, may mark the 
beginning and progress of the period in question. They 
are addressed to “ a man right fair ” and “ a woman colored 


P A 

I M 




iKAiu* u 

THE RENAISSANCE 




115 


ill.*’ What the exact relations were between the three can 
only he guessed at. It has been plausibly conjectured that 
the “Dark Lady” of the Sonnets was the evil genius of 
Shakespeare's life, and that to her was chiefly due the change 
in his spirit and in his art. Of course it must be admitted 
that no such personal explanation of this change is needed. 
The poet's sympathy was so all-embracing, and his outlook 
on life so broad, that the darker aspects of human charac- 
ter and destiny had sooner or later, in the natural course 
of things, to absorb his attention. Whatever may. be their 
personal bearing, however, the Sonnets are of inexhaustible 
interest, for the subtlety and depth of their thought, and for 
the curious mixture of oddity and artificiality, with tran- 
scendent beauty and power, in their expression. If Shake- 
speare had written nothing but these, he would still be a 
commanding figure in the literature of the English race. 

The plays of this period ^fall into three groups : the 
Roman plays, Julias Ccesar) Antony and^Cleopatra, and 
Coriolanus p the so-called comedies, Measure Jor Measure K 
and Troilus amtJJress^da ; and the tragedies, Hamlet , 
Macbeth ]> Othello p* and King Learr Timon of Athens 3 
stands, as we shall see, somewhat apart. 


|t<lw 


In Julius Ccesar , the hero is in one sense not Caesar, 1 


but Brutus, in whom the poet saw a political idealist and — 
generous dreamer, used as a tool by selfish men, The Roman . . 

who bring overwhelming disaster upon the Plays ’ 
state by their murder of the only man strong enough to 
save it. In another sense, the hero is Caesar's spirit after 
death, “ ranging for revenge,'' and letting “ slip the dogs 
of war '' to bring the world to ruin. In Coriolanus , the 
second Roman play, Shakespeare poured out his contempt 
for the “mob,” the fickle, many-headed multitude, played t i 
upon by demagogues, and working its own destruction in qjV^ ^ 
its hatred of those who refuse to flatter and amuse it. In 
Antony and Cleopatra he showed the character of a great 
Roman general, crumbling before the breath of Eastern 


116 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


luxury and sensuality, personified in Cleopatra, the 
V worm .of old Nile.” 

In Measure for Measure Shakespeare struck at the hy- 
pocrisy of a man high-placed in office and posing as a severe 
moralist, who nevertheless yields to the very sin 
and Bitter^ he punishes most ruthlessly in others. In Troi - 
Comedies.” ^ Cressida he drew a picture of faithless- 
ness in love, a picture so cynical, so fierce in its bitterness, 
that it is almost impossible to think of it as the work of the 
hand which drew Juliet, Portia, and Rosalind ; and at the 
same time he deformed the heroic figures of Homeric le- 
gend with savage burlesque. 

In Hamlet, the first of the four great tragedies which 
form the “captain jewels in the carcanet” of the master’s 
work, we have the spectacle of a sensitive and highly in- 
tellectual youth, endowed with all the gifts which make 
for greatness of living, suddenly confront- 
ed with the knowledge that his father has 
been murdered, and that his mother has married the 
murderer. Even before the revelation comes, Hamlet 
feels himself to be living in an* alien moral w r orld, 
and is haunted by dark misgivings. When his father’s 
ghost appears to him, with its imperative injunction 
to revenge, Hamlet takes his resolution instantly. His 
feigned madness, an element of the drama retained by 
Shakespeare from the old story whence he drew the plot, 
is the first device which Hamlet hits upon to aid him in 
his dangerous duty. In spite of the endless debate con- 
cerning the reality of Hamlet’s madness, there is no room 
for question in the matter. Not only is he perfectly sane, 
but his handling of the difficult situation in which he finds 
himself is in all points swift and masterful. He gives up 
his love for Ophelia because he cannot take her with him 
into the dark pass which he is compelled to enter; and the 
scathing satire which he pours out upon her when he fan- 
cies her in league with Polonius and the king to play the 


THE RENAISSANCE 


117 


spy upon him, gathers its force from the greatness of the 
renunciation he has made. His scheme for proving the 
king’s guilt beyond a peradventure, by means of the stroll- 
ing players, is consummated with ingenious skill. His 
dealings with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are those of a 
gifted man of action, to whose 'resolute will thought is a 
swift minister. The core of his purpose is always firm; 
and it is one of the ironies of circumstance that Hamlet 
has come to stand in most minds for a type of irresolution. 
This misunderstanding of the character is largely due to 
the exaltation of excitement in Hamlet, which causes his 
mind, even in the moment when he is pursuing his purpose 
with most intentness, to play with feverish brilliancy over 
the questions of man’s life and death; which makes his 
throbbing, white-hot imagination a meeting-place for gro- 
tesque and extravagant fancies; and which leads him, so 
to speak, to cover the solid framework of his enterprise 
with a wild festoonery of intellectual whim, to envelop it 
in fitful eloquence, swift and subtle wit, contemptuous 
irony, and mordant satire. Yet this is merely the by-play 
of his mind, the volatilized substance which escapes under 
the heat of excitement. In the midst of it he remains per- 
fectly master of himself and of his means, a supremely 
rational, competent, and determined being, a prince and 
master of men, dedicated irrevocably to ruin in the moral 
chaos where the “cursed spite” of his destiny has thrown 
him. With a miraculous art, Shakespeare has depicted 
this character, not fixed in outline, but changing and pal- 
pitant as life itself; so that it constantly eludes our defini- 
tion, and seems forever passing from one state of being into 
another, in the passion of its struggle. 

Othello has a certain affinity to Hamlet in that here also 
the hero’s soul is thrown into violent perturbation by the 
discovery of evil poisoning the very sources of l<oth H ,, 
his life. In Othello’s case the pathos and the 
tragedy are heightened by the fact that the evil exists 


118 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

only in the hero’s imagination, into which we see the 
demon-like Iago pouring, drop by drop, the poison of sus- 
picion. Othello is not by nature jealous. Desdemona in 
answer to Emilia’s question, “ Is he not jealous ?” says, 

“ Who, he ? I think the sun, where he was born 
Drew all such humors from him,” 

and he everywhere shows himself “of an open and free nat- 
ure,” incapable of petty suspicion. But when Iago, work- 
ing cautiously, with diabolic skill, has at last convinced him 
that Desdemona is false, the fatal rage which seizes him is 
an hysterical reaction from the sickening blow of disillu- 
sion. The real centre of gravity in the play is Iago, with 
his “honest” manners, his blunt speech, his downright 
materialistic philosophy, his plausible zeal in his master’s 
service ; underneath all which his real nature lies coiled 
like a snake, waiting for a chance to sting. 

In Macbeth, Shakespeare depicted the passion of ambi- 
tion working in a nature morally weak, but endowed with 
an intense poetic susceptibility. Macbeth is a dreamer 
and a sentimentalist, capable of conceiving vividly the goal 
of his evil desires, but incapable either of resolute action 
in attaining them or of a ruthless enjoyment of them when 
attained. By the murder of the king, Macbeth is plunged 
into a series of crimes, in which he persists with a kind of 
faltering desperation, until he falls before the accumulated 
vengeance, material and ghostly, raised up to punish him. 
As, in Antony and Cleopatra, we are shown the slow degen- 
eration of the hero’s character under the slavery of sense, so 
here we behold the break-up of a soul under the torture of 
its own sick imagination. The ghost of Banquo, shaking 
its gory locks at Macbeth from its seat at the banquet table, 
is a symbol of the spiritual distemper which results from 
the working of a tyrannous imagination upon a nature 
morally unprovided. The witch-hags who meet Macbeth 
on the heath are concrete embodiments of the powers of 


THE RENAISSANCE 


119 


evil, summoned from tlie four corners of the air by affinity 
with the evil heart of the schemer. Shakespeare did not, 
of course, consciously strive after symbolism in these things. 
It does not seem impossible, indeed, that he believed in 
ghosts and witches, as did the great mass of men in his 
day, from King James down. It is certain that he was in- 
terested in his story, here and elsewhere, as a piece of life 
rather than as a moral symbol; his work is full of types 
and symbols simply because life itself is full of them. 

Beside Macbeth Shakespeare has placed a woman who pos- 
sesses all the masculine qualities which the hero lacks, but 
who is nevertheless intensely feminine in her devotion to her 
lord’s interest, and in her inability to endure the strain of a 
criminal life after his support has been withdrawn from her. 
Her will, though majestic when in the prosperous service 
of her husband’s ambition, collapses in sudden ruin when 
he fails to rise to the responsibilities of their grim situation. 
Macbeth’s feebler moral substance crumbles piecemeal; 
but the firm structure of his wife’s spirit, as soon as its 
natural foundation is destroyed, falls by instant overthrow. 

King Lear is often put at the apex of Shakespeare’s 
achievement, and by many judges at the head of the dra- 
matic literature of the world. The story was “King 

as old as Geoffrey of Monmouth (see page 24), Lear." 

and, like so many of the themes which Shakespeare handled, 
had already been made the subject of a play, a crude 
effort by some nameless playwright during the experimental 
stage of Elizabethan drama. Here, as was his constant 
custom, Shakespeare followed the main lines of the story 
given him, and incorporated into his grand edifice every 
bit of usable material from the building of his predecessor. 
Here too, as always in Shakespeare if we pierce to the core 
of his meaning, the real tragedy is a spiritual one. Lear is 
an imperious nature, wayward by temperament, and made 
more incapable of self-government by long indulgence of 
its passionate whims. At the opening of the play, we see 


120 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


him striving to find a refuge from liimself by surrender- 
ing all his wealth and power in exchange for absolute love. 
The heart of the old king demands love ; love is the ele- 
ment upon which it subsists, and age, instead of abating 
this hunger, has made the craving more imperious. He 
demands love not only in the spirit but m the letter, and 
thrusts his youngest daughter Cordelia from him with 
cruel brusqueness, when she refuses to use the terms of 
extravagant hyperbole to describe her affection. Shake- 
speare has made this same brusque and hasty spirit of the 
king precipitate upon his old head the enmity of his re- 
maining daughters, Goneril and Regan. Before he has 
recovered from the shock of Cordelia's defection, this awful 
pair of daughters lay bare, little by little, their monstrous 
souls to their father's gaze. As in Othello, the result of 
the revelation is to unhinge for the sufferer the very order 
of nature. As if in sympathy with the chaos in Lear's 
soul, the elements break loose ; and in the pauses of the 
blast we hear the noise of violent crimes, curses, heart- 
broken jesting, the chatter of idiocy, and the wandering 
tongue of madness. The sentimentalist's phrase, “ poetic 
justice," has no meaning for Shakespeare. The ruin 
wrought in the old king's heart and brain is irrepar- 
able, and the tornado which whirls him to his doom car- 
ries with it the just and the unjust. The little golden 
pause of peace, when Lear and Cordelia are united, is 
followed by the intolerably piercing scene in which he 
bears her dead body out of the prison, muttering that they 
have hanged his “poor fool." The consequences of rash 
action, heartlessly taken advantage of, were never followed 
out to a grimmer end. 

Timon of Athens, the last play of the period we have 
End of shake- k een traversing, h as little of the insight and 
speare’s “ p e- poetic splendor which we associate with Shake- 

nod of Gloom.” 

speare s name. It has no relieving touches such 
as soften and humanize the tragedies just discussed. It is a 

4 ... 9 ' fv 








THE RENAISSANCE 


121 


kind of summing up of the pessimistic view of life, in the 
person of Timon, the misanthrope, whose savage rhetoric 
is poured out upon the selfishness and baseness of men. 

The plays which mark the closing period of Shakespeare's 
life are pure romances, conceived in a spirit of deep 
and lovely serenity, and characterized by a sil- 
very delicacy, a tender musing touch, which is HlsLastplays * 
new in the poet's work. This is less true of Cymbe- 
Une , the first of the group, than of A Winter’s Tale 
and The Tempest ; but even in Cymbeline the new mood 
is apparent, in the exquisite picture of Imogen, and in the 
woodland scenes between Arviragus and the young princes. 
It is still more apparent in the pastoral under-play in 
A Winter’s Tale , where Prince Florizel woos Perdita, 
the wild-flower maid. It shines out full-orbed in The 
Tempest, where Prospero sways with his magic the 
elements and the wills of men to his bidding, in the 
service of his daughter's happiness. In this play all 
the powers of the master meet together ; the grace that 
had created the fairy world of Midsummer Night’s Dream, 
the lyric passion that had breathed through Juliet's lips on 
her bridal morning, the drollery and wit that had set the 
laughter of centuries billowing about Falstaff, the titanic 
might that had sent a world crashing on the head of Lear 
— all meet together here, but curbed, softened, silvered 
down into exquisite harmony. 

The Tempest is believed to have been written for the 
wedding ceremonies of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of 
James I., and Prince Frederick, the Elector << Xhe Tem- 
Palatine, in 1613. If this is true (and it seems pest ‘” 
now to be beyond reasonable doubt), The Tempest was 
Shakespeare's farewell to his art. When scarcely fifty 
years of age, with his genius at its ripest, and every 
faculty of his mind in full play, he laid down his pen for- 
ever ; as Prospero, at the end, abjures his magic, breaks 
his wand, and drowns his book “ deeper than did ever 


122 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


plummet sound.” One is tempted to indulge the fanciful 
parallel still further, and to think of Ariel, the delicate- 
and potent sprite whom Prospero sets free, as the spirit of 
Imagination, now released from its long labors in the mas- 


ter's service. 

The common opinion that Shakespeare was unappreci- 
ated by his own generation, is only partly true. If other 
Appreciation evidence were lacking to prove the esteem in 
spe S a h re k inhis which he was held, his material prosperity 
Day * would be sufficient to show at least his high 

popularity with the theatre-going public. But there is 
witness that his genius was in tolerable measure recognized. 
His great anti-type and rival, Ben Jonson, whose burly 
good sense was not prone to exaggeration, and who perhaps 
never quite conquered a feeling of jealousy toward Shake- 
speare, wrote for the first collective edition of the plays, 
published in 1623, a eulogy full of deep, in places even 
passionate, admiration; and afterward said of him in a 
passage of moving sincerity, “ I did love and honor him, 
on this side idolatry, as much as any.” The most signifi- 
cant hint we have of his personal charm is in the adjective 
which is constantly applied to him by his friends, et gen- 
tle,” a word also often used to describe his art, in allusion 
evidently to its humanity and poetic grace. 

The awe inspired by the almost unearthly power and 
richness of Shakespeare's mind is apt to be deepened by the 
knowledge that the noble plays to which English-speaking 
races point as their greatest single achievement, were thrown 
His careless- wor ^ carelessly, and would have per- 

ness of Fame, ished altogether if the author of them had had 
his way. During his lifetime they were printed only in 
pirated editions, taken down by shorthand from the lips 
of the players, or patched up from prompter's manuscripts 
dishonestly acquired. He does not mention his plays in 
his will. Not until seven years after his death did a col- 
lective edition appear (known as the First Folio), and then 


THE RENAISSANCE 


123 


only because of the piety of two of his actor-friends. Those 
ill-inspired persons who would ascribe the plays of Shake- 
speare to Francis Bacon, make this carelessness of his fame 
on the poet's part a chief support of their argument. If 
we were compelled to explain Shakespeare's case on prac- 
tical grounds, it would be easy to do so. The printing of 
a play while it was still actable, was disadvantageous to the 
company whose property it was ; and Shakespeare had 
probably made over his plays to his company as they were 
produced. Notwithstanding, when all this is taken into 
consideration, we are yet filled with astonishment. We 
see in the working of the master's spirit not only the 
vast liberality, but the startling carelessness of Nature, 
who seems with infinite loving pains to create her marvels, 
and then to turn listlessly away while they are given over 
to destruction. 




% 


U 




CHAPTER YII ... 

X* 

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY l SHAKESPEARE S CONTEM- 
PORARIES AND SUCCESSORS IN THE DRAMA 


In the preceding chapter, we regarded Shakespeare as 
standing alone, in order that by isolating his work we 
might better see its absolute qualities. We must now 
turn to those playwrights who worked at the same time 
and in many cases side by side with him, and try to get 
some notion of the wonderful variety of the drama during 
its period of full bloom. Afterward we must trace briefly 
the steps by which the drama declined, both by inner de- 
cay and outward opposition, until, in 1642, at the begin- 
ning of the great Civil War, the doors of the theatres were 
closed, not to open again until the Restoration, eighteen 
years later. 

The most commanding figure in the group of Shake- 
speare's dramatic contemporaries is Ben Jonson (1573- 
1637). Although of humble birth, the son of a 
bricklayer, he was sent to Westminster School 
and possibly to Cambridge ; and he ultimately became one 
of the most learned men of his time. As a young man 
he served a campaign with the English army in Flanders, 
where (as he afterward boasted) he fought a duel with a 
champion of the enemy in the sight of both armies, and 
took from him his arms, in the classic manner. The inci- 
dent is highly characteristic of Jonson's rugged and 
domineering character. As he served the Flemish soldier, 
he afterward served the luckless poets and poetasters who 
challenged him to a war of words. 

After returning to England, he began to work for the 
theatres. His first play was Every Man in His Humour 

124 


Ben Jonson. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


125 


(1597), in which Shakespeare is known to have acted. A 
series of literary quarrels followed, in the course of which 
he wrote several elaborate plays. The Poetaster , Cynthia’s 
Revels , etc., to revenge himself upon his rather puny 
enemies. His four masterpieces appeared between 1605 
and 1614. They are The Silent Woman , Volpone , The 
Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, — all called comedies 
by him, though the second is a gloomy and biting satire, 
and the last a pure farce. He also wrote two massive 
tragedies taken from Roman history, Sejanus and Cat aline. 
For many years after his appointment by James I. as poet- 
laureate, he supplied the king with court-masques, little 
spectacle-plays delicate in fancy and rich in lyric tracery, 
which were acted at Whitehall by gorgeously costumed 
lords and ladies, amid magnificent stage-settings contrived 
by the king’s architect, Inigo Jones, with the lyrics set to 
music by the king’s musician, Ferrabosco. 

Jonson’s work as a dramatist was in sharp contrast with 
that of all his contemporaries. In the first place he set 
himself squarely against the romantic tendency jonson’s 
of his day, and threw the whole weight of his Classicism - 
powerful intellect, his great learning and invention, into 
the task of converting the drama to classicism. He took 
up the line of development which had been begun in 
Gorboduc, Ralph Royster Doyster , and other plays written 
when the influence of Seneca and Plautus was at its height ; 
and he fought all his life long a single-handed battle 
against what he judged to be the ignorant preference of 
the public for the romantic form. Not only did he stand 
out for the classical “ unities” (see page 95) but he made 
war upon the fantastic and extravagant qualities of ro- 
mantic imagination, and labored to supplant them by clas- 
sical sanity and restraint. Anything further than Every 
Man in His Humour from Twelfth Night or The Tem- 
pest, it would be difficult to imagine. The latter are full 
of glancing imagination and irresponsible fancy ; the for- 


126 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

mer moves in the prose light of every day, and deals with 
everyday London characters in a straightforward method- 
ical fashion. The work of the two poets in historical 
tragedy, offers even a stronger contrast. Shakespeare, in 
dealing with an epoch of the past, works with the free 
hand of the romanticist ; even where he keeps closest to 
the actual facts of history, as in Julius Ccesar, he cares 
chiefly to create breathing men and women, and takes 
little trouble to give a faithful picture of the times. The 
historical plays of Jonson, on the other hand, are monu- 
ments of learning ; they attempt to be scrupulously faith- 
ful, in historical details, to the period portrayed. Shake- 
speare and the romantic school fling the most riotous fun, 
the most farcical nonsense, into the midst of tragic action ; 
with Jonson and his school it is a point of honor to keep 
the dignity of tragic action unimpaired by such intrusion. 

Another peculiarity of Jonson’s art is hinted at by the 
title of his first play, Every Man in His Humour . The 
word “ humor ” was a cant term in his day* 

i i 2vcry lYEciii ^ 

in His Hu- equivalent to “whim” or “foible.” He hit 
upon the device of endowing each one of his 
characters with some particular whim or affectation, some 
ludicrous exaggeration of manner, speech, or dress ; and of 
so thrusting forward this single odd trait that all others 
might be lost sight of. Every man, in other words, should 
be in his humor.” This working principle Jonson ex- 
tended afterward in his two great comedies, Volpone and 
The Alchemist. In Volpone he studied, not a foible or 
whim, but a master-passion, the passion of greed, as it 
affects a whole social group; in The Alchemist he made 
an elaborate study of human gullibility. There is doubt- 
less something mechanical in this method of going to work 
according to a set programme. Shakespeare also has 
devoted whole plays to the study of a master-passion, — 
in Othello that of jealousy, in Machetli that of ambition. 

* Note Bardolpli’s use of the word in Henry IV. and Henry V. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


127 


But he does this in a very different way from Jonson; with 
much more variety, surprise, and free play of life. Jonson 
has, as it were, a thesis to illustrate, and holds up one 
character after another, as a logician presents the various 
parts of his argument. In other words, he always, or nearly 
always, lets us see the machinery. But while he thus loses 
in spontaneity, he gains in intellectual unity and in mas- 
siveness of purpose. 

In at least one respect the comedies of Ben Jonson are 
the most interesting plays in the whole Elizabethan reper- 
tory, — namely, in the vivid pictures they give jonson’s 
of contemporary London life. Other drama- Realism, 
tists took up the notion later, and did admirable work of 
the kind. Dekker, in his Shoemakers’ Holiday , and Mid- 
dleton in his Roaring Girl and other plays, mirrored freshly 
and faithfully the society immediately about them ; but 
Jonson seems to have been the pioneer in this respect. 
Every Man in His Humour probably antedating even 
Henry IV., Shakespeare's triumphant essay in this form 
of realism. From Jonson's comedies alone it would be 
possible to reconstruct whole areas of Elizabethan society ; 
a study of them is indispensable if one would know the 
brilliant and amusing surface of the most sociable era of 
English history. At least one of Jonson's comedies, too, 
gives this close and realistic study of manners with a gay- 
ety and grace fairly rivalling Shakespeare ; the Silent 
Woman is one of the most sparkling comedies ever writ- 
ten, full of splendid fun, and with a bright, quick move- 
ment which never flags. 

Jonson's lyric gift, for its delicacy and sweetness, was 
conspicuous even in the Elizabethan age, when almost 
every writer was capable of turning off a charm- 
ing song. The best known of his lyrics are 
“ Drink to me only with thine eyes," and “ See the chariot 
at hand hereof love"; of both these the old-time music 
has fortunately reached us. Jonson was also a critic of 


His Lyric Gift. 


128 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


great sanity and force, writing a perfectly simple and 
unadorned prose, very different from the elaborate and fig- 
urative prose-style practised by his contemporaries. His 
volume of short reflections upon life and art, entitled Tim - 
her, shows in an attractive guise the solidity, aggressive- 
ness, and downright honesty of his mind. 

It was chiefly these qualities of aggressive decision and 
rugged honesty which enabled him to hold for a quarter of 
a century his position of literary dictator, and 
L|terary S a lord of the “ tavern-wits.” The tavern was for 
Dictator. ^he seventeenth century what the coffee-house 
was for the eighteenth, a rallying place for literary men ; 
and Jonson is almost as typical a tavern figure as Falstaff. 
His “ mountain belly and his rocky face,” his genial, domi- 
neering personality, ruled by royal right the bohemian 
circle which gathered at “ The Mermaid ” or “ The Devil,” 
where the young fellows of the “ tribe of Ben ” heard words 

“ So nimble and so full of subtle flame 
As if that every one from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 

And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life.” * 

Here took place those famous wit-combats between Jonson 
and Shakespeare, described by Fuller under the simile of a 
sea-fight; Jonson, slow of movement and “high built in 
learning,” being likened to a great Spanish galleon, Shake- 
speare to an English man-of-war, swift to strike and 
dart away, confounding the enemy with agility and 
adroitness. 

The qualities for which Ben Jonson demands admiration 
are rather of the solid than the brilliant kind. In an age 
of imaginative license he preached the need of restraint ; 
in an age of hasty, careless workmanship he preached the 
need of sound construction and good finish. He was a safe 

* Verses entitled “ Master Francis Beaumont to Ben Jonson.” 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


129 


guide ; if the younger dramatists of his day had heeded 
him, the drama would not have gone on, as it did, deepen- 
ing in extravagance and license until it died, so to speak, 
of dissipation. But except for his effect upon the lyric 
poetry of Herrick and the Cavalier song-writers, his direct 
influence was small. He stood outside the great wave of 
romantic feeling, of which Spenser, Shakespeare, and Mil- 
ton mark the successive crests ; and when he died in 1637, 
broken down and embittered, the triumph of classicism 
seemed far off indeed. The movement which he had start- 
ed, however, went on, through indirect and often obscure 
channels, until its culmination in Dryden and Pope. The 
seeds of eighteenth century classicism are to be found in 
Jonson's work. 

Of the life of Thomas Dekker almost nothing is known. 

The date of his birth is guessed to be between 1570 and 
1577, and he is entirely lost sight of a few years Thomas P 
before the outbreak of the Civil War. But Dekker. ■ s r 
though next to nothing is known of him, his individuality L. 
is so distinctly reflected in his plays, that he seems one of 
the most definite figures of his time, — a sunny, light-hearted 
nature, full of real even if somewhat disorderly genius. 

The Shoemakers ’ Holiday (written before 1599), perhaps 
his earliest play, is his best. It is a study of London 
apprentice life, woven about a slender but charming love- 
story. The master-shoemaker, Simon Eyre, and his wife 
Margery, are drawn with a broad exuberant humor wholly 
captivating. The Shoemakers’ Holiday has in it all the 
morning gladness and freshness of the Elizabethan temper. 

Dekker wrote one other charming play, Old Fortunatus, 
a dramatized fairy-tale of the wishing-hat and exhaustless 
purse. It is a chaotic piece of work, but its incoherence 
rather adds to than detracts from the dreamy nursery-tale 
effect. The later work of Dekker, most of it done in col- 
laboration with other playwrights, is much more serious. 

It is as if he had fallen under the shadow of gloom begin* 


130 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 




ning to steal over England, presaging the storm and stress 
of the Civil War. 

Thomas Heywood is another dramatist whose history is 
almost a blank. He was probably born about the same 
time as Hekker, and seems to have been alive in 
Heywood. K 348 . His life therefore spans the whole period 
of the drama from Marlowe to Shirley. He was im- 
mensely productive, declaring himself to have had “a 
whole hand or a main finger in two hundred and twenty 
plays." He must in fairness be judged as a dramatic jour- 
nalist, in an age when the theatre tried to do what the 
newspaper and the lecture hall now accomplish, rather 
than as a dramatist in the more dignified and permanent 
sense. In one direction, however, Heywood achieved 
mastery, namely, in the drama of simple domestic life. 
His most famous play of this nature is A Woman Killed 
tvith Kindness. Here for once Heywood handled his sub- 
ject with noble simplicity, with deep tragic effect, and 
with a truth and sweetness of moral tone, which justify 
Charles Lamb's saying that Heywood is “ a prose Shake- 
speare." In the drama of domestic life mixed with ad- 
venture, Heywood is also successful, though in a less su- 
preme degree. Perhaps the best example of this type of 
play to be found among his works is The Fair Maid of the 
West, in which there are some capital vignettes of life in 
an English seaport town, as well as some delightfully 
breezy melodramatic sea-fighting. 

Thomas Middleton (1570-1627) was a man of much 
larger calibre. He developed slowly, but his work shows 
Thomas very last a steady gain in power and 

Middleton. sweetness. By his frank contact with life as 
it is, and by his continual effort to see life in its plainness 
and entirety, he attained at last to a grasp and insight 
which place him among the great names of the English 
stage. He had no university training, but was entered at 
Gray's Inn in 1593. His life about the law courts gave him 




UKjLa- 





THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


131 


an intimate knowledge of the shady side of the metropolis, 
which was of great service to him when he began, about 
1607, to write realistic comedies. Of these the best is per- 
haps A Trick. jo Catch the Old One. His transition from 
comedy to tragedy is marked by the very interesting play, 

A Fair Quarrel , in which the noble seriousness of certain 
scenes, and the fine dramatic ring of the verse, herald the 
approach of his complete maturity. It was between 1620 
and his death in 1627, that is, when over fifty, that he 
wrote the two plays, The Changeling and Women Beware 
Women , in which his sturdy powers show themselves fully 
ripened. ~ HulcrV KjL- nMJ 

Both The Cliangeling and Women Beware Women are , 

unpleasant in plot, and marred by the obtrusion of crude ~ 

horrors. They belong in fact to a peculiar type The << Tragedy 
of drama, vastly relished by Elizabethan au- of Blood. 
diences but repellent to modern taste, called by literary 
historians the “ tragedy of blood.” Thomas Kyd’s Spanish 
Tragedy began the type, Marlowe in the Jew of Malta, 
and Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus ; continued it. In- 
deed, Hamlet and Lear are really in plot “tragedies of 
blood,” though spiritualized out of all inner resemblance 
to the species. As we shall see later, John Webster’s two 
masterpieces are pure “ tragedies of blood,” making use 
of the element of physical terror in season and out of 
season. Middleton was therefore the victim of his age in 
this respect, as he was also in the moral violence, the selec- 
tion of strained and painful situations, which mar the 
two plays under consideration. When they were written, 
the decadence of the drama had set in ; and Middleton was 
not great enough to hold his work altogether above the 
swift downward trend of the stage at the time. But both 
The Changeling and Women Beware Women , are studded 
with fine poetry, fine in feeling and supremely fine in ex- 
pression. Middleton learned, better than any of Shake- 
speare’s fellows, the secret of the master’s diction. With- 


132 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


out imitating the Shakespearean manner, he handles 
language, at his best, with the same superb confidence ; and 
this is true of his comic prose as well as of his serious 
J-U blank verse. 

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher are, in Lowell's 

,y v 




phrase, among “ the double stars of the heavens of poetry.' 

Beaumont and Fletcher, the elder of the two, was the son of a 
Fletcher. 




- 

A 


Bishop of London, through whom the young 
dramatist gained an unusual insight into court life. None 
of Fletcher's fellows knew so well as he how to paint the 
hollow inside, and the exquisite outer finish, of courtly 
manners. Another fact contributing to form his genius, 
was that the official residence of his father, the episcopal 
palace at Fulham, lay amid beautiful river and forest scen- 
ery. To the country memories gathered here in boyhood 
he gave expression later in the pastoral play of The Faith- 
ful Shepherdess , as well as in the songs with which his 
dramas are richly interspersed. 

At the Mermaid tavern, among those “sealed of the 
tribe of Ben," he met the man whose name is inseparably 
linked with his own. Francis Beaumont was 
seven years younger than Fletcher, being about 
twenty-one at the time of their meeting. After 
their partnership began, tradition says that they lived to- 
gether on the Bankside, sharing everything, even their 
clothing, in common. This at least represents a more 
essential truth, that they entered into a singularly effec- 
a ^ K ^ tive intellectual partnership ; one mind supplying what 
the other lacked, to produce a result of full and balanced 
beauty. The closeness with which the work of the two 
is intertwined, is shown by the fact that although Fletcher 
outlived Beaumont by nine years, and the latter had no 
hand at all in forty of the fifty-odd plays that go under 
, their common name, attempts to isolate the genius of one 
from the other by comparison of the Fletcher plays with 
the Beaumont-Fletcher group, have led equally well- 




Their 

Intellectual 

Partnership. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


133 


equipped critics into exactly opposite conclusions. The 
weight of opinion, however, seems to be that Beaumont 
had the deeper and more serious imagination, and the 
greater constructive power ; and that Fletcher excelled 
chiefly in lyric sweetness, rhetorical fluency, and many- 
colored sentiment. Beaumont died in the same year as 
Shakespeare (1616) ; his co-laborer lived until the acces- 
sion of Charles I., in 1625. 

Among the plays jointly written, the best are perhaps 
Philaster and The Maid’s Tragedy. The theme of Philaster 
is a common one in the old drama, the same, for ,, The Maid’s 
instance, as that of Cymbeline , namely, the un- Tra g ed y-” 
founded jealousy of a lover, and the unswerving faithful- 
ness of his love, who follows him in the disguise of a page. 
This situation, with its almost inexhaustible resources of 
romance, is handled with extreme grace ; and the play con- 
tains perhaps more passages of pure poetry than any other 
in the authors* long list. The Maid’s Tragedy is dramat- 
ically more powerful. The soul of the hero is torn between 
his sense of personal honor, and his sense of the inviolable 
divinity of the king who has shamefully wronged him ; the 
latter feeling, though difficult for us to conceive, being 
easily comprehensible under the Stuart kings. In spite of 
its power, or perhaps because of it, the play exhibits nearly 
all of those qualities which denote in Beaumont and Fletcher 
the beginning of the dramatic decadence. It shows us 
clearly that we have passed out of the age of Elizabeth into 
that of James I. 

In the first place, there is in The Maid’s Tragedy , and in 
the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher in general, an ob- 
vious straining after “intensity.” In a sense, to be sure, 
the search after intensity is often present even in the 
Elizabethan drama at its freshest and strongest. We have 
only to think of the typical characters and situations of 
Marlowe and Shakespeare, to realize this fact. But the 
intensity of the later drama is different ; it is more fever- 


134 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ish and artificial. As the obviously “ strong” situations 
began to be worked out, dramatists made excursions into 
the strained and the exceptional, in order to find novel 
matter. A second and more fatal flaw in Beaumont and 
Fletcher is the laxity of the moral atmosphere pervading 
much of their work. The moral values are not preserved 
with the absolute health of soul which is Shakespeare’s 
greatest glory, but are apt to be blurred or distorted in 
the endeavor after piquancy and novelty. 

These defects have been dwelt upon because they are 
symptomatic of the change already beginning; a change 
destined to destroy the drama from within, even if it had 
not been crushed by its Puritan enemies from without. 
But it would be a great mistake to conceive of Beaumont 
and Fletcher in this merely negative light, without hold- 
ing in mind their great positive qualities. They are “ ab- 
solute lords of a goodly realm of romance ; " and the plays 
that go under their common name, for splendor and charm 
are perhaps not to be paralleled in any single body of 
Renaissance drama, outside of that of Shakespeare him- 
self. 

In John Webster we encounter the phenomenon of a 
really great poet, — one who in sheer power of expression 
„ T ^ x comes nearest to Shakespeare of all the men of 

John Webster. . A 

that generation except Middleton, — devoting 
himself to melodrama of the most gory and unrestrained de- 
scription. His two greatest plays, The White Devil (1612) 
and The Duchess of Mai fi (acted 1616), push the devices of 
physical horror to their farthest limit. They show the 
“ tragedy of blood ” in its most developed form, and employ 
all the grisly paraphernalia of the madhouse, the graveyard, 
and the shambles, as well as the agencies of moral terror, 
to wring from the drama all the crude excitement it is ca- 
pable of giving. The subject-matter of Webster, therefore, 
is as far as possible from appealing to modern taste. But 
his power of conceiving character, and still more the sur- 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


135 


prising poetry, now wild and stormy, now tender and lyri- 
cal, now pungently epigrammatic, which he puts into the 
mouths of his people, have kept his fame intact, in spite of 
the repellent form of play he chose to exhibit these gifts 
upon. Of the two plays named above. The Duchess of Malfi 
is the finer. Webster not only shows in it a much firmer 
stagecraft than in his earlier effort, but he also reveals pow- 
ers of gayety and playfulness, and an understanding of the 
heart, hardly to be looked for from one who voluntarily 
elected the tragedy of blood as his medium. At least two 
of the characters, the Duchess of Malfi and her husband An- 
tonio, are robust and healthy figures, who even under the 
stress of torture keep their broad quiet humanity. They 
show what Webster might have done if he had been born 
under a luckier star. 

Early in the history of the drama a war began to be 

waged between the actors and the Puritans. In 1576 we 

hear of strolling companies being kept out of 

^ i ^ between 

London by Puritan law-makers ; and when the Act^s and 

first theatres were erected they were placed in 
the suburbs to the north, and in the “ liberties,” or exempt 
lands, across the Thames in Southwark. Under Queen 
Elizabeth's protection the actors grew strong enough to 
enter the city ; and as long as her strong hand was at the 
helm, the Puritans did not assert themselves very vigor- 
ously. But when James I. came to the throne, with his 
lack of personal dignity, his bigoted dictum of the divine 
right of kings, his immoral court full of greedy nobles from 
Scotland and Spain, the Puritan party gained rapidly in 
aggressiveness. The thing which the Puritans hated most 
under the sun, after copes and crucifixes, was the theatre, 
because it was in the theatre that the “ lust of the eye and 
the pride of life” found fullest expression. Naturally 
therefore, as the Puritan disapproval grew more severe, the 
dramatists drew away from the London burgesses, and ap- 
pealed in the tone and matter of their plays more and more 


136 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


to the corrupt taste of the court, — a fact to which the rapid 
degeneration of the drama was in large part due. 

It has been thought from certain passages in the plays of 
Phillip Massinger (1583-1640), as well as from their gen- 
Phillip Mas- era l tone > that he was at heart a Puritan, not in 
singer. the narrow political sense, but as the term ap- 
plies to men of high moral ideals, to whom the things that 
make for righteousness are the first concern, and the shows 
and passions of life, by comparison, unreal. By some ironic 
fate, Massinger was born a dramatic poet at a time when the 
stage, to live at all, had to appeal to the jaded taste of a 
court. He spins his plots of worldly passion and ambition, 
therefore, but without real interest in them. When wick- 
edness is required he forces his characters duly into wicked- 
ness, and in the effort to overcome the bias of his mind, 
makes them very wicked indeed. But it is when he has a 
chance to treat some theme of self-sacrifice, of loyalty, of 
gratitude, of unworldly renunciation in the interest of an 
ideal, as in The Great Duke of Florence, The Virgin Martyr , 
and The Maid of Honour , that he shows himself to be a real 
poet, and handles his subject with placid dignity and power. 
He also achieved at least one great success in comedy, in his 
Neio Way to Pay Old Debts. The character of the miser 
and extortioner in this play. Sir Giles Overreach, holds a 
place among the classic figures of the English stage. 

In John Ford (1586-1640?) the search after abnormal sit- 
uations reached its height on the moral and spiritual side, as 
it had done in Webster on the physical side. Ford was a man 
of means, not compelled to write hastily in order to gain 
an uncertain livelihood from the stage. His plays are good 
in form and his blank verses excellent. But while his 
work shows no sign of degeneration in respect to form, 
his deliberate turning away from the healthy and normal 
in human life, and the strange morbid melancholy which 
shadows his work, betray very plainly that he is of the 
decadence. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


13? 


The great procession of dramatic poets which , begins with 
Marlowe comes to an end with James Shirley (1596- 
1666). In him we detect a constant attempt to James shir- 
eke out his own scanty invention by imitating ley * 
his predecessors. His work has, in other words, the “ lit- 
erary ” quality, as distinguished from original inspiration. 
This criticism, however, applies chiefly to his tragedies. 
In comedy he struck out a type of extreme interest as 
being a direct forerunner of the Restoration comedy. The 
best one for study is Hyde Park , where some of the scenes 
are laid in the famous park during the progress of a horse- 
racing exhibition ; it would take only a slight change here 
and there to convince us that we are among the gallants 
and dames of the time of Charles II., or even of Queen 
Anne. The dialogue is in prose, the language perfectly 
everyday and realistic ; instead of the long monologues and 
rhetorical passages of the earlier romantic comedy, there is 
a quick bandying of the shuttlecock of talk. The tone is 
that of a frivolous, gossipy age, not much in earnest about 
anything, and given over to the cult of fashion. 

When we remember that Hyde Park was written on the 
eve of the most tremendous upheaval which English society 
has ever witnessed, this frivolity of tone becomes significant. 
It marks the point of extreme departure from the Puritan 
temper. So long as the dramatists were in earnest, even 
in the portrayal of those things which to the Puritan mind 
were abominations, there was a bond of sympathy. What 
the Puritan could not stand, was the gay insincerity, the 
airy trifling with the essential facts of life, such as Shir- 
ley's comedies exemplify. After the election of the Long 
Parliament, the Puritan party quickly came to a reckoning 
with the theatre. In 1641 appeared a pamphlet called 
“ The Stage- Players* Complaint/' which says pathetically, 
“ The High Commission Court is down, the Star-Chamber 
is down, and some think Bishops will down ; but why should 
not we then that are far inferior to any of these, justly 


138 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


fear that we should be down too ? 99 In September of 1642 
an ordinance of both Houses of Parliament closed the thea- 
tres throughout the kingdom. They were not reopened 
until eighteen years later, when the reins of power had 
fallen from the dead hand of Cromwell, and Charles II. 
ascended the throne from which his father had been led to 
the scaffold. 




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CHAPTER VIII 






f AjCL -LM Ck 

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY : NON-DRAMATIC LITERA- 
TURE BEFORE THE RESTORATION 


The drama, as has been shown, declines from Shakespeare 
by plainly marked stages ; as in its growth it was highly 
organic, so in its decay the break-up of the 
organism progressed rapidly and logically. But Sctwof the 1 " 
with non-dramatic literature between the death Penod ’ 
of Elizabeth and the Restoration, 1603-1660, the case is 
different. Here we find the greatest confusion, the most 
bewildering variety of mood, of manner, and of artistic 
aim. The reasons for this confused character of seven- 
teenth century literature were chiefly two. In the first 
place, the age was one of great religious excitement, of vio- 
lent social and political change. The country was torn by 
warring factions, one supporting the established church, 
the divine right of kings, and all the institutions of the 
old social order ; the other demanding a severance of the 
church from the state, and the submission of the king to 
parliament. The result of this conflict was the Civil War, 
which drenched the country in blood, unsettled all the 
foundations of society, and gave to literature the uncer- 
tainty, the feverish groping, characteristic of a transition 
time. In the second place, literary criticism had hardly 
begun to exist, and there was nothing to check the reign of 
individual whim and romantic exaggeration which the 
Renaissance had instituted. Sidney, it is true, had done 
some valuable work in criticism, and Ben Jonson continued 
through the first forty years of the century to exert a 
restraining influence upon the lawless imaginations of his 

139 


140 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


time ; but even Jonson could do little to check the pre- 
vailing anarchy of form and thought. The typical prose 
of the century is over-colored, elaborate, wayward, inatten- 
tive to form. The typical poetry is extravagant, whim- 
sical, with sudden beauties breaking forth from obscurity 
and mannerism. Yet such is the contradictory character of 
the era, that it produced, in Herrick and the Cavalier song- 
writers, some of the most exquisite minor workmen, and 
in Milton, the greatest formal master, among English 
poets ; and in Bacon and Bunyan it gave to English prose 
supreme examples of terse and simple style. Finally, the 
literature of the whole era is characterized by a mood of 
deep seriousness, or by some attempt to escape from this 
prevailing mood. It is full of bold speculation, of lofty 
and often melancholy meditation upon life and death, nat- 
ural to an age which experienced profound religious emo- 
tion at the same time that it saw the rise of modern sci- 
entific thought. 

Francis Bacon, to whom the beginnings of modern sci- 
ence are in great part due, was born in 1561, three years 
Bacon • his before Shakespeare. His father was Lord 

Life and Keeper of the Great Seal to Elizabeth, and his 

uncle was Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's prime- 
minister. He was thus marked out by birth for a public 
career ; *md he threw himself into the strife for place, with 
the keen intellectual zest and the moral ruthlessness char- 
acteristic of the Renaissance courtier. Owing to the 
opposition of his jealous uncle, he got little preferment 
under the queen ; but under James I. he rose rapidly 
through various offices to be Lord Chancellor, with the 
title of Viscount St. Albans. In this position he supported 
his dignities by a magnificence of living altogether out of 
proportion to his legitimate income. In 1621 he was 
impeached before the House of Lords for bribe-taking 
and corruption in office, found guilty, and subjected to 
fine and imprisonment. He retired, a broken and ruined 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


141 


man, to his country seat of Gorhambury, and spent the 
remaining five years of his life in scientific and philosophic 
pursuits ; still, however, keeping up a show of his former 
magnificence, with an unconquerable pride which caused 
Prince Charles to exclaim, “ This man scorns to go out 
in a snuff ! ” 

For BacoiTs personal character it is impossible to feel 
much admiration. He exhibited nearly all the unworthy 
traits of the Renaissance politician, — greed, ostentation, 
heartlessness, and lax public morality. But it is equally 
impossible not to admire his spacious and luminous mind, 
and the devotion to pure thought which constituted his 
deeper life. In a letter written at the outset of his career, 
he says proudly, “ I confess that I have as vast contempla- 
tive ends as I have moderate civil ends ; for I have taken 
all knowledge to be my province.” In pursuance of this 
majestic programme he sketched out a work which was to 
have been called the Instauratio Magna. Of the 
six books only one, known as the Novum Orga- uai • * pro- 
num , reached anything like definite shape ; the theTSuctiVe 
Advancement of Learning (written also in Latin System - 
as De Augmentis Scientiarum) was intended as an introduc- 
tion to the whole. The chief contribution made by Bacon 
to science was the application of the principle of inductive 
reasoning, whose superiority to the scholastic method of de- 
duction he firmly established. The immense development 
of the natural sciences since his time has been made possible 
only by the acceptance of the inductive method of thought, 
by which the observation of specific facts leads up to the 
formulation of general laws. In the old scholastic system of 
deduction, general principles had been first laid down, and 
particular facts had been explained in the light of these 
principles. In the latter case, since theory rested on no 
actual experience, the explanations flowing therefrom had 
for the most part been fantastic and untrue. The change 
in method had to come with the rise of the scientific spirit ; 


142 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


it is Bacon’s glory that he saw and expressed the vital 
need of change, before the scientific spirit had yet grow 1 ' 
conscious of itself. 

Bacon believed that Latin was the only medium to be de- 
pended upon for preserving thought ; he therefore wrote in 
English only incidentally, and under protest. The Essays, 
The by which he holds his chief place in English 

Essays. literature, were at first mere jottings down of 
desultory ideas, brief note-book memoranda. As such 
they were first published (then ten in number) in 1597, in 
the author’s thirty-sixth year. Fifteen years later they 
were issued again, with additions ; and in 1625, a year 
before Bacon’s death, they were put forth in final form, the 
Essays now numbering fifty-eight, the old ones revised and 
expanded. It is clear that their charm grew upon Bacon, 
and urged him, half against his will, to put more and more 
serious effort into the manipulation of a language for which 
he had no great respect, yet of which he is one of the 
greatest masters. 

Even in their finished state the Essays are desultory and 
suggestive, rather than coherent or exhaustive. They deal 
Their Sub- with many subjects, of public and private eon- 
ject-Matter. duct, of statecraft, of the nature and value of 
human passions and human relations ; and with these 
graver themes are intermingled others of a lighter sort, on 
building, on the planting of gardens, on the proper mount- 
ing and acting of masques and other scenic displays. To 
a modern understanding those which deal with the deeper 
questions of human nature are apt to seem somewhat shal- 
low and worldly wise. We get from them few large in- 
sights or generous points of view ; everywhere we find wit, 
keen observation, grave or clever mundane judgments. 
Now and again, to be sure, Bacon startles us with an alto- 
gether unworldly sentence, such as this : “ Little do men 
perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth ; for a 
crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pict- 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


143 


ures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no 
love.” Some of the essays, such as that entitled Of Great 
Place , show an unworldly wisdom which, if applied to 
Bacon’s own life, would have made it a very different 
thing. Not seldom, too, he lifts the curtain upon that 
inner passion of his existence, the thirst for intellectual 
truth, which made him noble in spite of the shortcomings 
of his character: “ Truth,” he says, “which only doth 
judge itself, . is the sovereign good of human nature.” 

Bacon shows himself in the Essays to be a consummate 
rhetorician. He made for himself a style which, though not 
quite flexible and modern, was unmatchable for 
pith and pregnancy in the conveyance of his Their Style ‘ 
special kind of thought. Though a devoted Latinist, and 
using a much Latinized vocabulary, he saw the structural 
differences of the two languages so clearly that, when the 
bulk of English prose was being written in loose sentences 
of enormous length, he struck out at once a thoroughly 
English type of sentence, short, crisp, and firmly knit. 
He rejected the conceitfulness and over-crowded imagery 
of the Euphuists, but knew how to light up his thought 
with well-placed figure, and to give to it an imaginative 
glow and charm upon occasion, contrasting strongly with 
the unfigurative style of Ben Jonson, who represents in 
his prose the extreme revulsion from Euphuism. For the 
student of expression, Bacon’s essays are of endless interest 
and profit ; the more one reads them the more remarkable 
seem their compactness and their nervous vitality. They 
shock a sluggish attention into wakefulness as if by an 
electric contact ; and though they may sometimes fail to 
nourish, they can never fail to stimulate. 

Bacon holds a commanding place in seventeenth century 
thought, but he can hardly be called typical of the cen- 
tury. He did not share its characteristic melancholy ; his 
imagination is always subordinated to thought, whereas 
the characteristic mood of the century is one of dreamy or 


144 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Donne as a 
Poet. 


mystical contemplation, in which imagination always takes 
the lead of abstract thinking ; and finally he does not 
pass, as the typical seventeenth century writers so frequently 
do, from moods of earthly passion to moods of religious 
ecstasy. In all these respects the spirit of the time is better 
represented by a man whose youth fell, like Bacon’s, in the 
high tide of the Elizabethan era, but who, from the first, 
stood apart, prophesying, both in his matter and his man- 
ner, of the age of James and Charles, — John Donne (1573- 
1631). 

Donne spent a wild and irregular youth at Oxford and 
Cambridge, in the London Inns of Court, and in the south 
of Europe. Before the end of the sixteenth 
century he produced a body of lyric poetry of 
the utmost singularity. It is full of strange, interrupted 
music, and of vivid passion which breaks in jets and flashes 
through a veil of obscure thought and tortured imagery. 
In these moments of illumination, it becomes wonderfully 
poignant and direct, heart-searching in its simple human 
accents, with an originality and force for which we look in 
vain among the clear and fluent melodies of Elizabethan 
lyrists. Unfortunately these moments are comparatively 
rare. What is more immediately apparent in Donne’s 
poetry, and what fascinated his disciples, is his use of 
ms use of “ conceits,” i.e., far-fetched analogies and over- 
Conceits. ingenious metaphors, which are so odd that we 
lose sight of the thing to be illustrated, in the startling 
nature of the illustration. With him, love is a spider, 
which, dropped into the wine of life, turns it to poison ; 
night is an “ebon box,” into which weary mortals are put 
as “disordered clocks” until the sun gives them “new 
works. ”* This “ conceitful ” form of writing was practised 
by Marini in Italy, and by Gongora in Spain, simultaneous- 


* The second illustration is from one of Donne’s followers, George 
Herbert, but it is entirely in the master’s manner 


THE SEVENT/AXTH CENTURY 


145 


Donne as a 
Preacher. 


ly with Donne in England,* and during the first half of 
the seventeenth century it spread over Europe like an 
epidemic. It had a great and very baleful influence upon 
English poetry before the Restoration, atfecting even Mil- 
ton in his earlier work. Donne’s lyrics were not published 
in his lifetime ; but before their appearance in ms Influence 
1633, they had circulated for more than thirty 
years in manuscript, and their fascinating novelties and 
perversities had sunk into many minds which were to make 
the poetry of the next generation. 

In middle life Donne entered the church, where he rose 
rapidly to be Dean of St. Paul’s, and the most famous 
preacher of his time. He fell more and more 
under the shadow of a terrible spiritual gloom ; 
and just as, in the poetry of his youth, he had seemed to 
feel the unrest and feverish intensity of a later generation, 
so in the sermons of his later years he seems to feel, be- 
fore any of his contemporaries, the dark shadow of religious 
terror which was beginning to steal over Puritan England. 

The seventeenth century was pre-eminently an age of 
preaching. Theology was the first concern of all serious 
men, and it was round the pulpit that the storms which 
shook society chiefly raged. Of the large body of preach- 
ers who made the age illustrious in pulpit literature, Jere- 
my Taylor (1613-1667) was the most popular j er emy 

and gracious, as Donne was the most terrible Taylor, 

and impressive. Taylor, like Donne, shares in the charac- 
teristic melancholy of the age ; but in his case it is soft- 
ened and tenderly poetized. His tones are sweet and warm, 
woven into a rich melody that hovers at times on the verge 
of the sentimental and the florid. His most famous work, 
the Holy Living and Holy Dying (1650-1651) was written 
in Wales, where he lived during the troubles of the Civil 

* Donne was formerly thought to have borrowed his manner from 
these foreign sources, hut he is now believed to have developed it 
independently. 


146 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITER ATU HE 


War, Hazlitt says of the Holy Living and Holy Dying , 
“'It is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faithful fol- 
lowers of Christ as the shepherd pipes to his flock. • . 

He makes life a procession to the grave, but crowns it with 
garlands, and rains sacrificial roses on its path.” * 

In Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) the seventeenth 
century “time-spirit” found curious but very noble ex- 
sir Thomas pressioii. His mind was deeply tinged with 
Browne. melancholy, and he shared the prevalent ten- 
dency toward religious mysticism. But these qualities 
are oddly infused with scepticism flowing from his scien- 
tific studies, a kind of dreamy, half-credulous scepticism, 
very different from Bacon’s clear-cut rational view of 
things, but more characteristic of an age in which medi- 
aeval and modern ways of thought were still closely 
mingled together After studying medicine at the famous 
schools of Montpellier in France and Padua in Italy, 
Browne settled as a physician at Norwich, in Norfolk, and 
there passed his life. In 1642 appeared his first work, 
Religio Medici , a confession of his own personal religious 
creed. It is in essence a mystical acceptance of Christianity. 
“ Methinks,” he says, “ there be not impossibilities 
enough in religion for an active faith . . I love to 

lose myself in a mystery ; to pursue my reason to an 0 
Altitudo /” This sense of solemn exaltation, this losing 
His character- himself i n a mystery and an 0 Altitudo, is 
istic Mood. Browne’s most characteristic mood. He loves 
to stand before the face of the Eternal and the Infinite 
until the shows of life fade away, and he is filled with a 
passionate quietude and humility. We see in him how 
far the temper of men had departed from the Elizabethan 
zest of life, from the Eenaissance delight in the stir and 
bustle of human activity. “ Methinks,” he says, “ I 
begin to be weary of the sun. . . The world to me is 

* William Hazlitt, Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Eliza* 


the seventeenth century 


147 


but a dream and mock-show, and we all therein but panta- 
loons and antics, to my severer contemplations.” 

While the mighty struggle which Lord Clarendon depicts 
in his History of the Rebellion , was shaking the earth with 
its . “ drums and tramplings,” Sir Thomas Browne was 
quietly writing his longest work. Vulgar Errors ( 1646 ), an 
inquiry, half-scientific and half-credulous, into various pop- 
ular beliefs and superstitions. Twelve years later he pub- 
lished the Urn Burial, a short piece suggested The“um 
by the finding of some ancient Boman funeral Burial.” 
urns buried in the earth in the neighborhood of Norwich. 
The Urn Burial is ostensibly an inquiry into the various 
historic methods of disposing of the dead, but by implica- 
tion it is a descant upon the vanity of earthly ambition, 
especially in its attempt to hand on mortal memory to 
future ages. It is Browne’s most characteristic work, and 
contains perhaps the supreme examples of his style. 

The grandeur and solemnity of this style, at its best, is 
hardly to be paralleled in English prose. Like almost all 
the writers of his age, Browne is extremely desultory and 
uneven ; his “ purple patches ” come unex- Browne’s 

pectedly, but these occasional passages have style - 

a pomp and majesty which even Milton has not surpassed. 
His English is full of magniloquent words and phrases 
coined from the Latin, and the music of his periods is 
deep, stately, and long-drawn, like that of an heroic 
funeral march or the full-stop of a cathedral organ. The 
opening of the last section of the Urn Burial will serve 
perhaps to make these comparisons clear : “ Now, since 
these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of 
Methusaleh, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls 
of clay, outworn all the strong and specious buildings 
above it ; and quietly rested under the drums and tramp- 
lings of three conquests : what prince can promise such 
diuturnity unto his reliques ?” The way in which his im- 
agination plays through his thought and flashes a sudden 


148 


A HISTORY OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 


illumination of beauty over his pages, may be suggested 
by these words, written one night when he had sat late at 
his desk : “ To keep our eyes open longer were but to act 
our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America !" 

A wide-spread national mood usually finds its analyst. 
The melancholy of the seventeenth century, its causes, 
its manifestations, and its cure, were exhaustively treated 

by Richard Burton (1577-1641) in his Anatomy 

Burton and the " v . . , . , , ,, j 

“Anatomy of f of Melancholy, a book into which he gathered 

the out-of-the-way learning and the dreamy 
speculation of fifty years of recluse life at Brasenose Col- 
lege, Oxford. So curious a mixture of pedantry, imagi- 
nation, and quiet brooding humor, covering in a sense 
the whole life and thought of man, could hardly have 
been produced in any other era of English literature ; as, 
indeed, no other era would have suggested “ melancholy ” 
as a theme for encyclopaedic treatment. 

The character of an age is betrayed no more by the 
direct expression of its prevailing mood, than by the re- 
actions which occur against that mood, and by the attempts 
which are made to escape from its domination. Such an 
attempt to escape from the intense seriousness of their age 
we may perhaps trace in the amatory verse of Carew, 
The cavalier Lovelace, an d Suckling, who, from their con- 
Poets. nection with Charles's court, are known as the 
Cavalier poets. Of the three, Carew (1598-1638?) was 
the sincerest poet. His work is occasionally tinged with 
licentiousness; but much of it, on the other hand, has 
genuine beauty and dignity. He felt the influence of 
both Ben Jonson and Donne, and such a poem as “To 
His Mistress in Absence ” has the sanity and finish of the 
one, mingled with the magnetic eloquence of the other. 
He is best known by his lighter efforts such as his “ Give me 
more love or more disdain," in which poem his felicity and 
courtly address display themselves at their height. He 
wrote also a striking court masque entitled Caelum Brit- 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


149 


tanicum , which was produced in 1634 with the greatest 
magnificence, as a kind of counter-demonstration to a 
recent Puritan onslaught upon the theatre. Carew died 
in 1638, just before the bursting of the storm which was 
to scatter the gay society of Whitehall, and bring to 
poverty, exile, and death the men and women who had 
danced the measures in his joyous masque. 

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) and John Suckling (1609- 
1641) were young courtiers of wealth and great social 
brilliance, who practised poetry much as they practised 
swordsmanship ; facility in turning a sonnet or a song 
being still, as in the Elizabethan age, considered a part 
of a courtier's education. Each of them wrote, it would 
seem almost by happy accident, two or three little songs 
which are the perfection of melody, grace, and aristocratic 
ease. Suckling's tone is cynical and mocking ; the best 
songs of Lovelace, on the other hand, “ To Lucas ta on 
Going to the Wars," and “ To Althea from Prison," 
breathe a spirit of old-fashioned chivalry, of faithfulness 
to the ideals of love and knightly honor. Both Suckling 
and Lovelace met with tragic reversal of fortune ; and the 
contrast between their careless, brilliant youth, and their 
wretched death, has thrown about their names a romantic 
glamour which has had perhaps as much to do with pre- 
serving their fame as the tiny sheaf of lyrics they left 
behind. 

Another form of escape from the melancholy and the 
superheated atmosphere of the age, is shown by the pas- 
toral writers and celebrators of country life. T he Pastoral 
Two of these, William Browne (1590-1645) and Poets * 
George Wither (1588-1667), were pastoral poets in the 
exact sense. They continued the pastoral tradition of 
the school of Spenser ; and like Spenser they vitalized 
the conventions of pastoral verse by breathing into 
them a sincere feeling for nature, and by making them 
convey, under a playful disguise, a certain amount of 





150 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ethical and religious thought. Browne’s Brittania? s 
Pastorals give us the homely sights and sounds of Devon- 
shire, in a way which makes his pages charming in spite 
of their sentimentality, their false mythology, and their 
strained allegory. Wither’s Mistress of Philarete is a 
celebration of Virtue, whom the poet personifies and 
praises exactly as if she were some lovely shepherdess of 
the plain. A kindred spirit to these simple-hearted pas- 
toral poets is found in Isaac Walton (1593- 
Ile was a London linen-draper, who 


Walton: his i£qq\ 

Kinship with J-OSdj. 

the Pastoral S p en t hi s working days in measuring cloth and 


Poets, and 
Poets of C 
try Life. 


Poets of Coun- serv i n g hi s customers over the shop counter ; 


but who passed his holidays in quite another 
fashion, roaming with fishing-rod and basket along the banks 
of streams, and gazing with unspoiled eyes at the unspoiled 
peace and gayety of nature. His Complete Angler was 
printed in 1653, amid the fierce political and religious 
agitations of the Commonwealth ; but a sweeter or more 
untroubled book has never been written. Two other mem- 
bers of this group of nature-poets and celebrants of coun- 
try life remain to be mentioned, Robert Herrick and 
Andrew Marvell. The bulk of their work is, in the 
broader sense, pastoral ; but they were both touched 
deeply at times by religious emotion, and Marvell reflects 
in his later poetry the strenuous political life in which he 
took part. 

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was apprenticed in boyhood 
to his uncle, a goldsmith in Cheapside. After some time 
spent at Cambridge, he returned to London in 
his thirtieth year, and lived on his wits in the 
literary bohemia of the Inns of Court. In 1629, having 
taken orders, he was presented by King Charles to the 
vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. Here, with no 
duties to perform, save the reading of a weekly sermon to 
a handful of sleepy parishioners, he had ample opportunity, 
during the next nineteen years, to develop his peculiar 


Herrick. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


151 


lyrical gift. His genius was of the kind which carves 
cherry-stones, not of the kind which hews great figures 
from the living rock. Left perfectly to himself, amid the 
flowers of his vicarage garden, with the pretty traditional 
ceremonies and merry-makings of country life to look at, 
lie spent his days carving cherry-stones, indeed, but giving 
to them the delicate finish of cameos or of goldsmith's work. 
In poem after poem he enters with extraordinary zest and 
folk-feeling into the small joys and pageants of rural life, 
— a bridal procession, a cudgel-play between two clowns 
on the green, a puppet-show at the fair, the hanging of 
holly and box at Candlemas Eve. Perhaps the most ex- 
quisite of all is “ Corinna going a-Maying." This little 
masterpiece is drenched with the pungent dews of a spring 
morning. As the poet calls his “ sweet slug-a-bed" out of 
doors, and leads her through the village streets, already 
decked with white-thorn, toward the fields and woods 
where the May-day festivities are to be enacted, we feel that 
the poetry of old English life speaks through one who has 
experienced to the full its simple charm. Even the note of 
sadness at the end, the looking forward to that dark time 
when Corinna herself and all her village mates shall “lie 
drowned in endless night," has a peasant-like sincerity of 
feeling. 

When the Parliamentary forces had gained the battle 
which they had been waging with the King's men, and 
Herrick as a loyalist was ejected from his living, he went 
back to London. The year of his return (1648) he published 
his poems under the title of Hesperides and 
Noble Numbers, the latter half of the title re- Religious 
ferring to the religious poems of the collection. Poetry * 
There could be no more striking sign of the immense re- 
ligious ferment of the time than these poems, emanating 
as they do from an epicurean and pagan nature, whose 
philosophy of life is summed up in his most famous song, 
“ Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." In the wonderful 


152 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


poem called “ The Litany," the masterpiece among Her- 
rick's religious poems, we see how upon even his gay and 
sensuous nature there descended at times that dark shadow 
of religious terror which later found its final and appalling 
expression in the Grace Abounding of John Bunyan. In 
Herrick's case, however, this is only a passing phase of 
feeling. He is to be remembered as the poet of “ Corinna 
going a-Maying," the “ Night-Piece to Julia," and of a 
myriad other little poems in which he chronicles his de- 
light in nature, and in the exquisite surface of life as he 
saw it. 

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was among the first of Eng- 
lish poets to feel the charm of nature with romantic in- 
tensity, and at the same time with matter-of-fact 

Marvcli . .. .... ... „ . . 

realism. lhe bulk of his nature-poetry was 
written between his twenty-ninth and his thirty-first years, 
while he was living in country seclusion at Nunappleton, 
as tutor to the young daughter of Lord Fairfax, com- 
mander-in-chief of the Parliamentary forces. The prin- 
cipal record of these two years of poetic life is a long poem 
entitled “Appleton House;" besides this, the most beau- 
tiful of his country poems are perhaps “ The Garden " 
and “ The Mower to the Glow-worms." In these, and 
in his delicate little pastoral dialogues, he links him- 
self with the pastoral school of Spenser ; in other places, 
especially in the lines “To a Coy Mistress," he shows the 
influence of Donne. In his latt;r life Marvell served for 
a time as assistant to Milton, then acting as Latin secretary 
to Cromwell's government. He helped Milton in his 
blindness, aided him to escape from his pursuers at the 
Restoration, and watched with mingled admiration and 
awe the progress of Paradise Lost, which began about 1658 
to take shape, after twenty years' delay. In the noble 
“Ode to Cromwell," Marvell set an example, worthy of 
Milton himself, of simple dignity and classical restraint 
in the treatment of a political theme. 


TIIE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


153 


The religious excitement of the seventeenth century, 
which, as we have seen, found memorable expression in the 
prose of Donne, Taylor, and Browne, and which here and 
there affected the nature-poets, produced also a group of 
religious poets in the exclusive sense. Of these 
the first was Giles Fletcher (1588-1623), whose pJftofSS 8 
epic entitled Christ’s Victory and Triumph on Fletcher ‘ 
Earth and in Heaven , is, for all its quaintness of thought 
and phrase, no unworthy forerunner of Paradise Lost. 
It was published in 1610, when Milton was two years 
old. Signs of its influence upon Milton can be traced from 
his early Hymn on the Nativity to the Paradise Regained 
of his old age. The last canto, which deals with the Resur- 
rection and with the entrance of Christ into Heaven, is the 
most beautiful part of the poem. It is a great Easter 
hymn, expressing the joy of earthly and heavenly things 
over the risen Redeemer. The sympathy with nature which 
it reveals is exquisite, resembling Chaucer’s in its childlike 
delight and sweetness, but filled with a religious ecstasy 
which was not in Chaucer's nature. Giles Fletcher 
was a follower of Spenser, and the rich color and soft 
music of his epic constantly recall the verse of the Faerie 
Queene. 

Three later religious poets, Herbert, Crashaw, and 
Vaughan, were followers of Donne ; and they carried even 
farther than their master that use of “conceits,” of 
strained metaphors and difficult comparisons, which 
caused Dr. Johnson to nickname Donne and his disciples 
the “Metaphysical School,” though the “Fantastic 
School ” would have been a more descriptive title. But 
as in the master, so in the group of religious poets who 
most completely felt his influence, perversities of manner 
are continually redeemed by imaginative intensity and 
deep feeling. 

George Herbert (1593-1632), like Donne, published little 
or no poetry in his lifetime. After a youth spent in prep- 


IS 


154 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


aration for a court career, and some years of disappointed 
waiting for court favors, he entered the Church. Once 
within the pale of the religious life, he felt the full force of 
that spiritual agitation and awe which sooner or 
later overtook all serious minds in the first half 
of the seventeenth century. After two years of devoted 
labor as a parish priest at Bemerton, near Salisbury, he 
was stricken with a mortal malady. On his deathbed he 
handed to Nicholas Ferrar a bundle of manuscript, asking 
him to read it, and then to use it or destroy it, as seemed to 
him fit. The volume was published the next year under 
the title of The Temple , in allusion to the scriptural verse, 
“In His temple doth every man speak in His honor.” It 
is a curious picture of the conflict which Herbert went 
through, while subjecting his will and his worldly ambition 
to the service of God. 

Herbert pushed even further than Donne the use of 
conceits. Many of his poems are mere bundles of these 
oddities of metaphor, quaint and crabbed to the last de- 
gree. But he manages, by means of them, to express 
many pregnant and far-reaching thoughts. At times he 
shows an unusual power of direct and familiar phrasing. 
By means of sudden turns, emphatic pauses, lightning- 
like “stabs” of thought, he forces home his words 
into the reader's memory, and makes his quaint and dar- 
ing conceitfulness interpret, rather than obscure, his 
meaning. 

The pervading atmosphere of Herbert's poetry is one of 
moral earnestness and sincere piety, rather intellectual 
Crashaw. tlian lm P assione( l. He is, therefore, the true 
poet of the Church of England. Richard 
Crashaw (1613?-1650?), on the other hand, is the poet of 
Catholicism. His attitude toward divine things is not 
that of pious contemplation, but of ecstatic and mystical 
worship. His religious sense is southern rather than 
northern. The Reformation, as such, did not affect him. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


155 


It served merely to kindle into intense flame his devotion 
to the older Church. This is the more curious because of 
the fact that Crashaw's youth and early nurture were of 
an ultra-protestant sort. At the college of Peterhouse in 
Cambridge, however, he read deeply in the works of the 
early church fathers and in the lives of the saints, and he 
took part in the fasts and vigils of a religious brotherhood 
gathered about Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding, just out- 
side Cambridge. As the struggle between the Church of 
England and the Puritan dissenters grew more and more 
bitter, he fled for refuge to the arms of that venerable 
mother-church of which his nature had from the first 
made him a member, lie was exiled by CromwelPs gov- 
ernment ; and after a time of bitter poverty in Paris, he 
was befriended by a brother poet, Abraham Cowley, and in- 
troduced to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I., 
who had taken refuge at the court of France from the 
storms of civil war in England. Through her influence 
with a Roman Cardinal, Crashaw was given a place in 
the Monastery of Our Lady of Loretto, in Italy ; and he 
died shortly after, from the effect of a pilgrimage which he 
made on foot in the burning heat of the Italian summer, — 
a fit end for a poet in whom lived again the mystical 
religious fervor of the Middle Ages. 

Crashaw’s poetry is excessively uneven. It contains 
the most extravagant examples of frigid conceitfulness to 
be found among all the followers of Donne ; yet side by 
side with these, often in the same poem, occur passages of 
noble distinction. His two most characteristic poems are 
perhaps “The Flaming Heart ” and the “Hymn to Saint 
Theresa.” He sings the raptures of the soul visited by 
divine love, in terms as concrete and glowing as any human 
lover has ever used to celebrate an earthly passion. An 
ethereal music, and a kind of luminous haze, both re- 
minding us of Shelley's work, are the distinguishing 
features of his poetry at its best. At the close of his 


156 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


poem entitled “ Description of a Religious House,” we 
find the lines : 

The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers 

Her kindred with the stars, and meditates her immortal way 

Home to the original source of light and intellectual day. 

This is the key to Crashaw’s imaginative world. He is 
like a moth fluttering in the radiance which streams from 
the “ source of light and intellectual day.” 

Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), the third poet of this 
group, spent his youth among the romantic glens of the 
valley of the Usk, in northern Wales. Here was 
Vaughan. ^ j e g en( j ar y sea t Xing Arthur’s court ; and 

here, tradition says, Shakespeare heard from the lips of the 
country-folk the name and doings of Puck, before writing 
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Vaughan went up to Ox- 
ford in 1638, just as the quarrel between the King and the 
Parliament was drawing to a head. He fought for the 
King’s cause, and when that cause was lost, retired to his 
native valley in Wales, to spend the rest of his long life as 
an obscure country doctor. The death of his wife and his 
own severe illness awakened his religious nature, and under 
the influence of Herbert’s Temple he wrote and published 
(1650) the first part of Silex Scintillans, or Sparks from a 
Flint-stone, that is, sparks struck by divine grace from a 
hard and sinful heart. . 

Vaughan’s poetry, like Crashaw’s, is very uneven. The 
reader must search long before finding the things of value, 
but when found they are worth the search. His best 
poems, such as “The World,” “ Departed Friends,” and 
“ The Hidden Flower,” show an extraordinary insight into 
the mystical life of Nature and of the heart, and a strange 
nearness to the unseen world. No English poet has touched 
the deeper mysteries with more child-like simplicity and 
unconsciousness, nor with a more delicate and elusive 


music. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


157 


Another poet must be mentioned here, because of his 
connection with the 44 metaphysical school.” Cowley was 
famous as a poet at fifteen, at thirty his name 
was one to conjure with, and in his later 
years he was accepted by his contemporaries as the crown 
and acme of the poets of all time. His reputation de- 
cayed rapidly after his death, and he is now a somewhat 
44 frustrate ghost” in the corridors of fame. He has 
all the vicious mannerisms of the school of Donne, with 
little thought or passion to redeem them. His greatest 
effort, The Mistress , a series of love poems, might, in 
Dr. Johnson's energetic words, 44 have been written for 
hire by a philosophical rhymer who had only heard of 
another sex ; ” and his once-famous Davideis, an heroic 
poem of the troubles of King David of Israel, is now hope- 
lessly dead. From any sweeping condemnation of Cowley, 
however, must be excepted his earnest and simple lines 
44 On the Death of Mr. William Hervey,” his beautiful 
Elegy on Crashaw, and a few of his Pindarique Odes, 
which last have at times a full and sonorous music. The 
loose ode form, adapted by Cowley from the Greek of Pin- 
dar, was used all the way down through the age of Dry den 
and Pope, and was almost the only relief which the classic 
age allowed itself from the monotonous beat of the heroic 
couplet. Cowley, as secretary to Queen Henrietta Maria 
in her exile, was associated with the men who carried to 
victory the banner of classicism and prepared the way for 
Dryden. In his own work he hung dubiously between the 
romantic and the classic schools ; the romantic impulse in 
him was weak, and the classical instinct not spontaneous. 
Cowley, it must be said, took his fame modestly ; and in 
the preface to the Davideis he hopes that he has opened a 
way for other poets worthier than himself, in the field of 
the biblical epic. He had not opened the way, but the 
way was found : eleven years later Milton published Para- 
dise Lost. 


158 


\bQl - u*r'f -f-iwrt 

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

John Milton, after Shakespeare the greatest of English 
poets, was born December 9, 1608, in Bread Street, Lon- 
Miiton’s don. His father was a scrivener (notary pub- 
Eariy Life. w } 10 had embraced the Puritan faith, but 

whose Puritanism was not of the hard and forbidding 
type. The boy grew up in a home where music, literature, 
and the social graces gave warmth and color to an atmos- 
phere of serene piety. During his boyhood, England was 
still Elizabethan ; among the great body of Puritans, geni- 
ality and zest of life had not yet given place to that harsh 
strenuousness which Puritanism afterward took on. Milton 
was taught music, and was allowed to range at will through 
the English poets; among these Spenser, the poet of pure 
beauty, exercised over him a charm which was to leave its 
traces upon all the work of his early manhood. At Christ's 
College, Cambridge, whither he proceeded in his sixteenth 
year, he began to prepare himself with earnestness and 
consecration, for the life of poetry. He had already de- 
termined to be a poet, and that too in no ordinary sense. 
His mind was fixed on lofty themes, and he believed that 
such themes could be fitly treated only by one who had led 
a lofty and austere life. The magnificent ode, “ On the 
Morning of Christ's Nativity," which deals with the signs 
and portents filling the world at the Saviour's birth, was 
written at twenty-one. It showed clearly, or might have 
shown to anyone who had eyes to see, that another mighty 
poet had been given to England. 

Two years later Milton left Cambridge and went to Hor- 
ton, a little village west of London, whither his father had 
At ho ton retired to spend his declining days. Here, in 
a beautiful country of woods, meadows, and 
brimming streams, the young poet spent five quiet years. 
To the outward view he was all but idle, merely “turn- 
ing over the Greek and Latin classics " in a long holiday. 
Really he was hard at work, preparing himself by medita- 
tion, by communion with nature and with the lofty spirits 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


159 


of the past, for some achievement in poetry which (to use 
his own words) England “ would not willingly let die.” 
Meanwhile he was writing very little, but that little per- 
fect, thrice distilled. A sonnet sent to his friend on his 
twenty- third birthday shows that he was deeply dissatisfied 
with what he had done in verse before going to Horton ; 
and indeed, if we except the Nativity Hymn, he had rea- 
son to be dissatisfied. The other poems * of his college 
period are disfigured by the vices of conceitfulness, exag- 
geration, and tasteless ingenuity, peculiar to the seventeenth 
century. The Hymn itself is marred by the same faults, 
and even its beauties are some of them plainly imitative. 
But at Horton Milton’s taste gradually became surer, his 
touch upon the keys of his instrument superlatively firm 
and delicate. He went back to purer models, and learned 
how to borrow without imitating. The result was three 
long poems and several short ones, absolutely flawless in 
workmanship, full of romantic beauty curbed and chast- 
ened by a classical sense of proportion and fitness. It is 
in these poems that we first see clearly what Milton stands 
for in the poetic art of the century. He is a child of 
the Renaissance, the last of that great romantic line of 
which Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, and 
Fletcher are scions ; but he has drunk deeper than the 
others of the springs of antique art ; there is in him a 
more austere artistic instinct, linked somehow with his au- 
sterer moral nature. The spirit of his art is romantic , 
its expression is, in the widest sense, classic. 

The first product of Milton’s Horton period, the poem in 
two parts, “ L’Allegro ” (the joyous man) and “ II Pense- 
roso ” (the meditative man), is in its nature auto- 

v “ L’ Allegro’ * 

biographical. The two parts of the poem paint and “iipen- 

the two sides of Milton’s own temperament : the 

one urging outward, toward communion with the brightness 

* No notice is here taken of Milton’s Latin verse, the bulk of which 
dates from his college period. 


160 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and vivid activity of life; the other drawing inward, tow- 
ard lonely contemplation, or musings upon the dreamier, 
quieter aspects of nature and of human existence. To repre- 
sent these two moods he imagines two typical youths, liv- 
ing each through a day of typical thoughts and pursuits, 
in the midst of surroundings harmonious with his special 
tastes Taken together the two little poems give a view of 
the life which Milton led during the five happy years of his 
preparation for the poetic ministry, wonderfully compiessed, 
clarified, and fixed in permanent symbols. 

The next two poems of this period were in masque form ; 
one a fragment. Arcades , the other a complete masque, tak- 
ing its title from the chief character, “ Comus,” 
“Comus.” 0 f revelry. Comus was written at the re- 

quest of Milton’s friend Henry Lawes, a musician, who 
supplied the music, and played the part of the Attendant 
Spirit when the masque was presented (1634) in the castle of 
Ludlow, on the Welsh border. The “plot” of Comus is 
simple and very effective, affording just a touch of the 
fantastic mythological element needed for scenic display, 
yet leaving the main interest of the piece to centre upon 
the rich, serious poetry which Milton puts into the mouths 
of his few characters. Two brothers and a sister, astray 
by night in the forest, become separated ; the girl is taken 
captive by Comus, and is led to the place where he dwells 
surrounded by strange half-bestial creatures whom he has 
transformed. He attempts to work upon her the same 
transformation. She resists him, refusing to yield to the 
allurements of sense, and is at length rescued by her broth- 
ers and an “ attendant spirit,” who takes the guise of their 
father’s shepherd. It was characteristic of Milton that he 
should have put a serious moral lesson into a form of spec- 
tacular and lyric entertainment usually of the most frivolous 
kind. Fortunately, his power as an artist was so developed 
that he could charge the delicate texture of his masque 
with ethical doctrine, without at all marring its airy beauty. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


161 


When Comus was written, the Puritans and the court 
party were already drifting toward open conflict. The 
influences of the Kenaissance, for which the Deepening 
court party largely stood, were losing force ; f f e £iSs® 
and the moral enthusiasms flowing from the Be- Work - 
formation were meanwhile growing narrower and intenser, 
in that other element of the nation, the Puritan party, 
where they had taken deepest hold. An atmosphere of 
moral strenuousness, soon to deepen into sternness, and then 
into hard fanaticism, had begun to spread over England, 
affecting in one way or another the vital spirits of all men. 
In Comus this moral strenuousness finds expression, though 
in the most unobtrusive manner. In the last poem of 
Milton’s Horton period, “ Lycidas,” written in 1637, there 
is sounded a sterner note, a note of austere indignation 
and fierce warning against the corruptions which have 
crept into the Church. 

“ Lycidas” is an elegy upon the death of Edward King, a 
college-mate of Milton’s, drowned in the Irish Sea. King 
had been, in his way, a poet ; and it was a fixed 
convention, among the poets of the pastoral 
school, to represent themselves and their art under the 
guise of the shepherd life. When Milton, therefore, repre- 
sents himself and his dead friend as shepherds driving their 
flocks, and piping for fawns and satyrs to dance ; when he 
calls the sea-nymphs and the gods of the wind to task for the 
disaster of his fellow-shepherd’s death, — he merely makes 
use of a form of thought bequeathed to him through Spen- 
ser, Fletcher, and Browne, from a long succession of ear- 
lier poets. But he does not rest content with this ; he adds 
to it another kind of symbolism, not pagan but Christian. 
King, besides being a poet, had been a preacher, or at least 
had been in preparation for the ministry. He was therefore 
not only a shepherd under Apollo, but a shepherd under 
Christ; a keeper of the souls of men which are the flocks 
of the Good Shepherd. This second symbolism Milton 


Lycidas. 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


16 a 


boldly identifies with the first, for to him the poet and the 
preacher were one in spiritual aim. Still more boldly^ in 
the strange procession of classic and pseudo-classic divini- 
ties whom he summons to mourn over Lycidas, he in- 
cludes Saint 1 etei , the bearer of the keys of the Churchy 
and he puts in his mouth words of solemn wrath against 
those blind mouths, those worldly churchmen who, 

for their belly’s sake 

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ; 

closing with a shadowy menace of the punishment which 
is soon to overtake the ecclesiastical corruption of the age. 
Lycidas gathers up all the iridescent color and varied music 
of Milton's youthful verse, indeed, of the whole Spenserian 
school ; and at the same time, by virtue of the moral pas- 
sion which burns in it, it looks forward to the period of 
public combat into which the poet was about to plunge. 

The twenty years of Milton's life as a public disputant 
we must pass over hurriedly. They were preceded by a 
period of travel abroad (1638-1639), chiefly in Italy, during 
which he met Galileo, was entertained by the Italian 
literary academies, and pondered much upon a projected 
epic poem on the subject of King Arthur's wars, a subject- 
suggested to him by the epics of Tasso and Ariosto. His 
return was hastened by news of King Charles's expedition 
against the Scots, a step whose seriousness Milton well 
knew. Once back in London, he was drawn into a pam- 
phlet war on the vexed question of Episcopacy. Then 
followed his ill-starred marriage, and the writing of his 
pamphlets on divorce ; these were received with astonish- 
ment and execration by his countrymen, who did not see that 
Milton's Milton was only bringing to bear, upon one issue 
H?s b prose e: °f domestic life, that free spirit of question 
writings. everywhere being applied to public institutions, 
and everywhere spreading change through the social fabric 
of England. Another signal illustration of Milton's revo- 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


163 


lutionary questioning followed, in the shape of an attack 
upon the censorship of the press. The time-honored insti- 
tution of the censorship he saw to be an intolerable hinder- 
ance to freedom of thought ; and in a pamphlet entitled 
Areopagitica he launched against it all the thunders and 
•lightnings of his magnificent rhetoric. On the execution 
of the King (1649) Milton was the first to lift up his voice, 
amid the hush and awe of consternation, in defence of the 
deed. His pamphlet On the Tenure of Kings and Magis- 
trates was of such timely service to the Commonwealth 
party that he was offered the position of Latin secretary to 
Cromwell's government, his duties being to indite corre- 
spondence with foreign powers, and to reply to attacks by 
foreign pamphleteers of importance. In the midst of a 
controversy of this sort his eyes failed, and in a short time 
lie was totally blind. He continued his duties, with 
Andrew Marvell as his assistant, until he was dismissed in 
1658 by General Monk, who was already plotting to restore 
Charles's son to the throne, as King Charles II. On the 
king's return in 1660, Milton was forced to go into hiding, 
and he barely escaped paying with his life for his fearless sup- 
port of the ideals and actions of the Commonwealth party. 

Ever since his college days Milton had been looking for- 
ward to undertaking some work of poetry large enough to 
give scope to all his power. By 1642 he had virtually 
decided upon the subject of the fall of Adam, though he 
at first intended to treat the subject in the form of a 
drama. During the sixteen years between 1642 and 
his dismissal from the Latin secretaryship in 1658, this 
subject was seldom long absent from his mind. In the 
midst of the “ noises and hoarse disputes" into which he 
had thrown himself for patriotic service, the only poetic 
production which he allowed himself was a small group of 
sonnets, written at rare intervals and dealing for the most 
part with passing events. Except for these, he had hidden 
“ that one talent which is death to hide," but he more 


164 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

than once turned aside in his pamphlets, to throw out a 
proud hint concerning the work laid upon him by the 
“great Taskmaster/' of adding something majestic and 
memorable to the treasury of English verse. Meanwhile 
his chosen subject lay in his mind, gradually taking form, 
and gathering to itself the riches of long study and reflec- • 
tion. When at last his duty as a patriot was done, he 
turned at once to his deferred task. Forced to seek shel- 
• • Paradise ter from the storm of the royalist reaction, he 
Lost ‘” carried with him into his hiding place the open- 
ing book of Paradise Lost , begun two years earlier. The 
poem was finished by 1665, and was published by an ob- 
scure printer in 1667. 

The central theme of Paradise Lost , namely, the fall of 
Adam from a state of innocence into a state of sin, occupies 
The vastness a relatively small space in the whole scheme of 
of its scheme. ^ p 0em> The action begins * in heaven, be- 
fore man is created, or the earth and its ministering 
spheres are hung out in space. The rebellion of Lucifer 
against the omnipotent ruler of Heaven, the defeat of the 
rebel armies and their casting down into the dreary cavern 
of Hell, which has been carved out of Chaos to be their 
prison-house ; the creation of the terrestrial universe and 
the setting of man in the garden of Eden to take the place 
of the apostate angels in God's affection ; the expedition of 
Lucifer from Hell to Earth for the purpose of begtiiling 
the innocent pair ; the going and coming of God's messen- 
gers and sentinels, — all this constitutes a vast drama of 
which the actual temptation and fall of Adam is only an 
episode. With the exception of Dante no modern mind 
has conceived an action so immense, or set a world-drama 
on a stage of such sublime dimensions. 

* In the approved epic manner, Milton opens his poem in the middle 
of the action, after the rebellious angels have been cast down into Hell. 
The earlier events are given in retrospective narrative by the archangel 
Raphael and by Adam. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


165 


In spite of this vastness of scheme, however, Milton’s 
imagination does not take refuge in vagueness. His 
imagery is everywhere concrete, in places star- 
tlingly vivid and tangible. It may even be ness of its 
urged against the poem that some things are Imagery * 
presented with an exactness of delineation which detracts 
from their power to awe the mind ; but broadly speaking, 
the poet’s ability to evoke clear and rememberable pictures, 
of more than titanic size, and to make his cosmic drama as 
clear to our mental vision as are the natural sights of earth, 
gives to his work its most enduring claim upon our inter- 
est. Upon the theology of the poem time has laid its fin- 
ger ; a part of it thoughtful men now reject, or interpret 
in a far different sense from Milton’s. The blind Puritan 
bard hardly succeeded, even to the satisfaction of his own 
day, in his avowed intention to 

assert Eternal providence 
And justify the ways of God to men, 

for his religion was a special creed, made up in part of per- 
ishable dogmas. But by the imperishable sublimity of the 
pictures which he has given to our imaginations, he has 
asserted Providence in another sense, and justified God in 
the glory of the human mind He created. 

The word “ sublimity,” so often abused, has in the case 
of Milton’s later work, real fitness. It was a quality to 
which he attained only after years of stern ex- Milton’s 
perience ; it was the reward of his long renun- Subhmit y* 
ciation of his art in the interest of his country. There are 
suggestions of it in his youthful hymn on the Nativity, 
and one passage of Lycidas attains it : 

Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
Wash far away, where’er thy bones are hurled ; 

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 

Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 
Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world; 


166 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 

Sleep’st by the fable of JBellerus old, 

Where the great Vision of the guarded mount 
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold. 

These iines, taken in their proper connection, achieve 
that synthesis of the majestic and the mysterious which 
we call sublimity. They show that the quality was native 
to Milton’s mind. But it is highly probable that without 
those years of stern repression, when his imagination was 
held back by his will, gaining momentum like the dammed- 
up waters of a stream, he would never have attained that 
peculiar mightiness of imagery and phrase which causes 
Paradise Lost to deserve, as does perhaps no other work 
of literature, the epithet sublime. Of course, this sub- 
limity Milton gained only at the expense of some qualities 
of his youthful work which we would fain have had him 
keep. Grace, lightness, airy charm, — these had gone from 
him forever when he took up his art again after his long 
silence. The art of (C L’Allegro ” and “ Comus,” responsive 
and sinuous as the tracery of dancing figures about a Greek 
vase, had given place to an art as massive and strenuous as 
the frescoes of Michael Angelo, depicting the solemn scenes 
of the creation and destruction of the world. 

The change in the quality of thought and imagery is, of 
course, accompanied by a change in style. Blank verse 
Milton deliberately chose as the most severe of 

The Verse • ** 

of “ Para- ? English measures; having chosen it, he pro- 
ceeded to build out of it a type of verse before 
unknown, admirably suited to the grandeur of his subject. 
The chief peculiarity of this Miltonic verse is the length 
and involution of period. The sense is held suspended 
through many lines, while clause after clause comes in to 
enrich the meaning or to magnify the descriptive effect ; 
then the period closes, and this suspended weight of mean- 
ing falls upon the mind like the combing mass of a breaker 
on the shore. A second and scarcely less important charac- 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


167 


teristic (though hardly so novel), is the extreme variety of 
pause ; the sense comes to an end, and the suspended 
thought falls, at constantly varying places in the line, a 
device by which blank verse, monotonous when otherwise 
treated, becomes the most diversified of rhythms. In these 
and other ways Milton made for himself a sublime verse- 
instrument to match his sublime imagery and theme. The 
music of the Horton poems, compared with that of Para- 
dise Lost , is like the melody of the singing voice beside 
the manifold harmonies of an orchestra, or the rolling chant 
of a cathedral organ. 

In 1672, four years after the publication of Paradise 
Lost , appeared Milton's third volume of verse. (The col- 
lege and Horton poems had been published in 1645.) It 
consisted of Paradise Regained, a supplement to Paradise 
Lost ; and of Samson Agonistes, a drama in the Greek 
manner, on. an Old Testament subject which Milton had 
thought of treating nearly thirty years before. “Paradise 
Paradise Regained deals with Christ's tempta- Re s am e<i-’’ 
tion by Satan in the Wilderness. In his first epic Milton 
had shown how mankind, in the person of Adam, falls be- 
fore the wiles of the Tempter, and becomes an outcast from 
divine grace ; in his second he shows how mankind, in the 
person of Jesus, wins readmission to divine grace by with- 
standing the hellish adversary. By general consent Para- 
dise Regained is given a much lower place than Paradise 
Lost , in spite of passages that rise to an impressive height. 
The poet's weariness is manifest ; his epic vein seems . ex- 
hausted. Samson Agonistes, however, a vent- “ S amson 
ure in a new field of poetry, shows Milton's A g° mstes *” 
genius at its subtlest and maturest. His desire was to bring 
over into English the gravity and calm dignity of the Greek 
tragedies ; and, avoiding the lifeless effect of previous ex- 
periments of the sort, to give to his grave and calm treatment 
the passion, the conviction, the kindling breath without 
which poetry cannot exist. Two circumstances made this 


168 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


not only easy, but almost inevitable for him. In the first 
place his character, lofty and ardent to begin with, had 
now under misfortune and sacrifice taken on just that 
serene and melancholy gravity peculiar to the great tragic 
poets of antiquity. In the second place, the story of Sam- 
son was, in a sense, his own story. Like Samson he had 
fought against the Philistines with the strength of thirty 
men ; he had taken a wife from among his enemies and 
suffered bitter loss at her hands; he sat now, blind and dis- 
honored, amid the triumph of the Cavaliers, as Samson 
among the holiday-making Philistines. As he wrote, his 
own personal bitterness found veiled expression; and the 
grand choruses, with their dark and smothered music, pul- 
sate with personal feeling. 

Milton lived for three years after the publication of his 
last poems. Much of his patrimony had disappeared in the 
Milton’s readjustments of the Restoration, and in the 
Last Years. g rea t London fire of 1666 ; but he was still able 
to live in modest comfort. The painter Richardson gives 
us a glimpse of the poet during his last years, as he was 
led about the streets clad in a gray camblet coat, or as he sat 
in a gray coarse cloth coat at the door of his house, near 
B unhill Fields, to receive visitors. “ Lately/’ continues 
Richardson, “I had the good fortune to have another 
picture of him from an aged clergyman in Dorsetshire. 
In a small house . . up one pair of stairs, which was 

hung with rusty green, he found John Milton, sitting in 
an elbow chair ; black clothes, and neat enough ; pale but 
not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with 
chalkstones.” When we compare the figure thus suggested 
with the portrait painted in his twenty-first year, we real- 
ize how far and under what public and private stress. Mil- 
ton had travelled from the world of his youth. In making 
himself over from Elizabethan to Cromwellian he had suf- 
fered much and renounced much; he had lost many of 
those genial human qualities which have won for less 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


169 


worthy natures a warmth of love denied to his austerity. 
But if we deny him love, we cannot help feeling an ad- 
miration mixed with awe, for the loftiness and singleness of 
aim, the purity and depth of moral passion, which make 
him conspicuous even among the men of those moving 
times. 

The moral grandeur of Milton's character, and the im- 
aginative grandeur of liis art, become more striking when 
we see them projected against the background of the age 
into which he survived, and in which he did his later work. 
This was the age of the Bestoration comedy, a literary 
product hardly to be equalled anywhere in the history of 
the mind for heartless and shallow cynicism ; of the Bes- 
toration rhymed tragedies, monuments of fustian and 
rant ; of the political and occasional verse of Dryden, un- 
compromisingly clever and worldly-wise : it was an age im- 
mersed in mundane pleasures, sceptical, critical, in love 
with “common-sense” and intolerant of ideals. 

The deep voice of Milton rolled on its interrupted song 
more than a decade after the chorus of romantic poetry had 
been hushed, and men had turned away to listen to the new 
“ classical ” message of Dryden and the poets of precision. 
In like manner the fervid and imaginative prose of the first 
half of the century survives into the Bestoration period, in 
the work of John Bunyan, a late but very 

J \ # ^ Bunyan. 

striking exponent of the religious revival which 
had begun more than a century before to stir the con- 
science of Northern Europe. Bunyan, the rude tinker of 
Elstow, who produced, without learning or literary exam- 
ple, one of the unique masterpieces of imaginative English 
prose, can only be understood by reference to another and 
greater literary phenomenon of the seventeenth century, 
the Authorized Version of the Bible. This ver- The Kin? 
sion was made by order of James I. ; the work J amesBlble - 
was divided among numerous churchmen of his appoint- 
ment, and was finished in 1611. The translators used not 


170 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


only the original Hebrew and Greek texts, and the Latin 
Vulgate, but also the various English translations from 
Wyclif down. They succeeded in blending together the 
peculiar excellencies of all these, with the result that we 
possess in the King James Bible a monument of English 
prose holding of no particular age, but gathering up into 
itself the strength and sweetness of all ages. 

The influence of this mighty book upon the literature of 
the seventeenth century, although great, was restricted by 
its influence two circumstances. In the first place, the 
atureof e the ter " Bible was early monopolized by the Puritan 
century. party ; and biblical phraseology and imagery 
became associated with an ideal of life which, at least in 
the grim and ascetic form it assumed under James and 
Charles, was distasteful to most of the makers of litera- 
ture. In the second place, Latin was still held in super- 
stitious reverence among cultivated men ; and writers went 
to that language for instruction, neglecting the ruder but 
more vital excellencies abounding in the prose of the Bible. 

Bunyan, however, was at once a Puritan of the 

Puritans, an instinctive artist, and an un- 
learned man, to whom Latin was only a name. Hence the 
grandeur, simplicity, and force of biblical prose, acting 
without any interference upon his passionately earnest 
imagination, made him, all unknown to himself, a great 
writer. 

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was born in the village of 
Elstow, Bedfordshire. His father was a tinker, a trade 
then considered little above vagabondage. After a slight 
schooling, and a short experience of soldiering in the Civil 
War (on which side is unknown), he married a wife as poor 
His Religious as himself, and took up his father's trade of pot- 
- tr G U rlce es: an d kettle-mender. Before this, however, there 

Abounding. begun in him a spiritual struggle so terrible 

and so vivid, as we see it in the pages of his Grace Abound- 
ing to the Chief of Sinners (published 1666), that by 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


171 


contrast the events of his outer life are pallid and unreal. 
As he wrestled and played at tip-cat with his village mates 
on the green, or stood in the tower of the church to watch 
the bell-ringing, he was haunted by thoughts of sudden 
death, of the J udgment Day, and of his soul's damnation. 
He saw an awful Face looking down from the clouds, and 
heard a voice asking whether he would leave his sins and 
go to Heaven, or have his sins and go to Hell. The tiles 
upon the house-roofs, the puddles in the road, spoke to 
him with voices of temptation and mockery. Front this 
religious insanity he was rescued by a Mr. Gifford, a local 
preacher, who gave him comfort and courage. Soon Bun- 
yan himself began to preach ; and a revulsion of feeling 
now lifted him to heights of ecstatic joy in the merciful- 
ness of God and the beauty of holiness. He saw Christ 
himself looking down at him through the tiles of the 
house-roof, saying “My grace is sufficient for thee"; and 
the sense of salvation came like a “ Sudden noise of wind 
rushing in at the wbndow, but very pleasant." In all this 
we see in its most intense form the religious excitement of 
the seventeenth century, and also the qualities of imagi- 
nation and feeling which make Bunyan so powerful a 
writer* 

At the Restoration, persecution of the nonconformist 
sects began. Bunyan was arrested for holding illegal re- 
ligious meetings ; and he spent the next twelve 

. _ ° -1 Later Life: 

years in confinement, earning bread for his fam- “Pilgrim’s 

ily by putting tags to shoe-laces, and keeping 
his mind awake by writing what he was no longer at lib- 
erty to speak. In the midst of a sober controversial work, 
he happened to employ the trite metaphor of a journey, to 
typify the Christian life. At once the figure began to grow 
and blossom ; a throng of pictures and dramatic incidents 
started up before his mind. Almost before he knew it the 
metaphor had grown into a book, and The Pilgrim’s Prog- 
ress, one of the three great allegories of the world's litera- 


172 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ture,* was written. Bunyan seems to have been himself 
astonished at the ease with which the story grew, and a 
little frightened at the pleasure it gave him to present his 
solemn theme under the guise of a nursery tale. He kept 
the book locked in his desk, and did not publish it until 
1678, six years after his release from prison. 

It furnished the simple Bedfordshire cottagers for whom 
it was written, with a reflection of their own inmost strug- 
gles and aspirations, in a form which combined the fas- 
cinations of the novel, the fairy-tale, and the romance of 
adventure. The novel, the great literary discovery of the 
next century, appears here in its germ. Not only is the 
its subject physical world through which Christian jour- 
Mutter- neys from the “Wicket-gate” to the Land of 

Beulah, pictured with the most familiar realism ; but the 
wayfarers whom he meets are such as might have been seen 
in Bunyan’s day on any English market road, — portly Mr. 
Worldly- Wiseman, full of prudential saws; blundering, 
self-confident young Ignorance ; “ gentlemanlike ” Demas ; 
and sweet talkative Piety. The landscape, the houses, the 
people, are all given with quaint sturdy strokes which 
stamp them upon the memory forever ; so that it is almost 
impossible for a reader of Pilgrim’s Progress to think of 
the journey otherwise than as a real personal experience. 
And added to the charm which the book has as realism, is 
its charm as romance. If, in one sense, it may be said 
to have ushered in the eighteenth century novel, in an- 
other it may be said to have revived the mediaeval romance, 
in which the hero was made to contend against dangers 
natural and supernatural, on the way to the goal of his 
desires. Giant Despair in his grim castle, the obscene 
devils creeping and muttering in the Valley of the Shadow, 
the dreadful enemy Apollyon, the angels and archangels 
who lead the way, with harpings and hosannas, from the 

*The others alluded to are Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Dante’s 
Divine Comedy. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


173 


dread River of Death to the shining gates of the Celestial 
City, give to the story an element of marvel and adventure 
which immensely increases its appeal. If we add to this 
the charm of its style, so quaintly graphic, so ^ styie 
humorously direct, so tender and rich and lyri- 
cal when the author is moved by the beauty of his vision, 
it seems no matter for surprise that Pilgrim’s Progress, 
before Bunyan's death, was read with delight not only 
throughout England, but in France, in Holland, and in 
the far-off colonies of America. 

As Paradise Lost is the epic of Puritanism in its ex- 
ternal and theological aspect, the Pilgrim’s Progress is 
the epic of Puritanism in its inner and emotional phases. 
They are together the two great final products of that 
intellectual and artistic revival which we call the Renais- 
sance, and of that religious revival which we call the 
Reformation. They mark the end of the E ndofthe 
stream of literature which flows down into the erature^f the" 
second half of the seventeenth century from Centur y' 
its source in the later reign of Henry VIII. and in the 
early Elizabethan age. We must now turn to consider a 
stream of literature of a very different kind, which began in 
a revolt against the extravagance and formlessness of the 
reigning “ romantic” style, and which at the Restoration 
assumed an authority which it maintained uninterruptedly 
for nearly a hundred years. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY : THE RESTORATION 

The date 1660 is one of the most significant in the history 
of English literature, as it is in the history of English 
politics. In that year Charles II. was brought to the 
throne from which his father had been driven. The ex- 
travagant joy with which the king was received on his 
return from exile, showed how closely this change of gov- 
ernment from commonwealth to kingship corresponded 
to a change in the mood of the nation. The passionate 
TheRestora- absorption in other-worldliness, which was the 
non. essence of Puritanism, had, as we have seen, 

checked the frank delight in this world, and interest in the 
problem of living successfully there, which were of the 
Renaissance. But the Puritan ideal, by its very nature, 
could appeal directly to comparatively few. Indirectly, 
indeed, by force of example, it influenced many ; but the 
multitude at length grew weary of playing a part so ex- 
hausting and so difficult. During the latter years of the 
Commonwealth signs of a relaxed temper on the part of 
the public were not lacking ; for example, licenses were 
given for operas to be performed in London. When at 
length the leaders of the Commonwealth forsook their own 
Meal and confessed its failure, the mass of the nation 
turned with relief to the pleasures and interests of the 
present world, ready to regard with complacency even the 
excesses that characterized the court of Charles II. 

The Restoration period must not be thought of, however, 
as a continuation of the interrupted Renaissance. Between 
them there is an important difference. In the age of Eliz- 

174 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


175 


abeth, as in the age of Charles II. and his successors, 
the leading motive was indeed the exhibition of physical 
and mental power on the stage of this life, but the Eliz- 
abethan thought of this life not as limited and con- 
tracted by circumstances and conditions, but as having un- 
measured possibilities. Not only the geographical world, 
but the intellectual world also* was being enlarged and 
thrown open. The bounds of human thought, as well as 
those of human activity, seemed infinitely re- 
mote ; the imagination dealing with power, as tweenthe be " 
in Marlowe, or with knowledge, as in Bacon, Restoration 6 
took wings to itself and flew. But in the tern- |enaissance he 
perament of the Restoration period there was 
dependence on the resources of actual life, without faith 
in the extension of those resources. There was the dis- 
position to accept the present in its narrow sense, to 
exploit life on the narrow grounds that circumstances 
afforded. 

This sense of present fact, of realism, as distinguished 
from the transcendentalism of Renaissance and Puritan 

thought, is the chief characteristic of the mood 

® . Characteristics 

of the century which succeeded the Restoration, of the Restora- 
• , , . . . . tion Period. 

In science it showed itself as an absorption in the 

details of investigation, as opposed to the generalizations of 
Bacon. In politics it showed itself in the interest in actual 
conditions, as opposed to dreams of theocracy. In all 
directions it appeared as a disposition toward conservatism 
and moderation. Men had learned to fear individual en- 
thusiasm, and therefore they tried to discourage it by set- 
ting up ideals of conduct in accordance with reason and 
common sense, to which all men should adapt themselves. 
They tried to look alike, to behave alike, to write alike. 
Rules of etiquette and social conventions were estab- 
lished, and the problem of life became that of self- 
expression within the narrow bounds which were thus 
prescribed. 


176 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


The literature of the period reflects these tendencies. 
On its serious side it is largely concerned with politics, 

Restoration that is > with the effort ° f men t0 or g ani . ze the 
Literature. state, and to give it power sufficient to restrain 

individual ambition. The lighter literature reflects the 
interest of men in learning to live w T ith one another. 
Naturally, it is much concerned with life in town, and 
with details of dress and manners which are important 
there. But the most noteworthy evidence of the temper 
of the time in literature is the tacit agreement of writers, 
both in prose and poetry, upon rules and principles in ac- 
cordance with which they should write. The acceptance 
of these literary conventions drawn from the practice of 
writers of the past, marks the difference between the classic 
age of Dryden and Pope, and the romantic , individualistic 
epoch of Spenser and Shakespeare. 

In this difference the influence of France counted for 
much. There the reaction against the poetic license of 
the Renaissance had set in somewhat earlier. 
Its foremost representative, Malherbe, lived 
at the time when Henry IY. and Richelieu were laying 
foundations for the reconstruction of the French mon- 
archy; and he represents a sort of corresponding establish- 
ment of order and discipline in literature. Malherbe 
regulated versification, condemned license in rhyme, and 
waged war against all harshness and obscurity of expres- 
sion. In short, he anticipated the work of Dryden and 
Pope in England. The influence of Malherbe was supple- 
mented by that of Corneille and Racine, who developed a 
drama on the lines of Latin tragedy, succeeding where the 
English classicists of the sixteenth century had signally 
failed. At the same time Moliere developed realistic com- 
edy, in prose and verse. It must be remembered that 
many Englishmen of the class which cared for litera- 
ture and the stage, spent years of exile in France, and 
naturally came to accept the principles of French taste. 


The Influence 
of France. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


177 


Through the new artistic conceptions brought back to 
England by the exiles, French influence upon English lit- 
erature, especially upon the English drama, was strength- 
ened. To their notions of refinement the license of the 
older dramatists seemed uncouth. “I have seen Ham- 
let, wrote Evelyn, “but now these old plays begin to 
disgust this refined century, since their majesties have 
been so long abroad.” Altogether, though English lit- 
erature of the Restoration is a genuine native growth, in 
accordance with tendencies which can be discerned in the 
early seventeenth century, particularly in the work of Ben 
Jonson, yet the example of France, like that of Italy at 
an earlier period, was important in giving definiteness to 
movements which otherwise might have been tentative 
and hesitating. 

The most striking way in which English poetry reflected 
the spirit of the new era, was in its substitution of a single 
measurably perfect form for the varied lawlessness of the 
age which had gone before. This form, called the heroic 
couplet, consisted of two pentameter lines connected by 
rhyme. It had been used in earlier periods, for example by 
Chaucer; but in his hands the couplet had not The Heroi ' 
been necessarily a unit, the thought having often couplet, 
been drawn out into the succeeding pair of verses, with no 
pause at the rhyming word. And in the period of roman- 
ticism which followed the eighteenth century, the couplet 
was once more used with the old freedom. The literary 
ideals of the Restoration, as contrasted with those of the 
romantic school, may be illustrated by the comparison of 
a few lines from Keats, such as these from the beginning 
of Endymion, 

A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 

Its loveliness increases ; it will never 

Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing; 


178 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


with these from The Hind and the Panther of Dry- 
den : 

A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged, 

Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang’d ; 

Without unspotted, innocent within, 

She fear’d no danger for she knew no sin. 

In the first, it is clear, the couplet exerts little control over 
the thought ; in the second the thought is limited and reg- 
ulated by the acceptance of a precise and narrow form ; 
and this limitation and regulation were of the essence of 
Kestoration poetry. 

The first writer to use consistently the closed couplet 
was Edmund Waller (1605-1687). As early as 1623, in 
lines on “ His Maiesty’s Escape at Saint An- 

Waller, d j i 

drew,” he set the steady, measured step which 
succeeding poets were to follow with military precision 
for more than a century. His influence, however, became 
predominant only through the extraordinary energy and 
success of his pupil, the greatest literary figure of the age 
of Charles II., John Dryden. 

Dryden was born in 1631 at Aldwinkle, in Northampton- 
shire, his parents being of the upper middle class, and of 
Puritan sympathies. He was sent to Westminster School, 
and thence, in 1650, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he 
remained seven years. During this time his father died, 
leaving him a small property. His first important verse was 
an elegy on the death of Cromwell, written in 1658. Two 
years later, however, Dryden, with the mass of Englishmen, 
had become an ardent royalist ; and he welcomed the re- 
turn of Charles, in a poem in couplets called Astrcea Re- 
dux. In 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, a 
woman of higher rank than his own. It may have been 
Dryden ’s the desirability of increasing his income that, 

Early Life. j us £ before this marriage, drove Dryden to write 
his first comedy, The Wild Gallant. It certainly was his 
accumulating financial necessities that kept him writing for 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


179 


the stage constantly down to 1681. During this period 
his only poem of importance was Annus Mirabilis (1667), 
a chronicle of events of the preceding year, whioh had been 
distinguished by several victories at sea over the Dutch, 
and by the great London fire. 

In 1681 Dryden began the succession of political poems 
which have generally been accounted his best works. The 
times were troubled. The court and the country were 
divided between the partisans of the king’s brother, who, 
though a Papist, was recognized as the heir to the throne, 
and those of the king’s illegitimate son, the Duke H . g Satires 
of Monmouth, whom certain persons zealous for 
the Protestant faith were disposed to set up as a rival can- 
didate. The leader of the latter party was the Earl of 
Shaftsbury. In the story of the revolt of Absalom against 
King David, Dryden found an apt parallel to existing 
circumstances in England ; and his satire Absalom and 
Achitophel exposed the relations of Monmouth, the prince, 
and Shaftsbury, the evil counsellor, with merciless humor. 
The poem became immensely popular. The next year 
Dryden followed it with a second blow at Shaftsbury in 
The Medal. Then he turned aside in MacFleclcnoe to 
attack a rival poet, Shadwell, who had been employed by 
the Whigs to reply to The Medal. In this year, also, Dry- 
den extended his range into the field of religious contro- 
versy, with Religio Laid, a very temperate statement of a 
layman’s faith in the Church of England. Three years 
after this confession of faith, Dryden became a Roman 
Catholic, and in 1687 he published a political defence of 
the Church of Rome called The Hind and the Panther. 

All this political and religions writing brought him dis- 
tinction, and a modest income. In 1670 he was made 
Historiographer Royal and Poet Laureate, with a salary of 
two hundred pounds a year. Later he received a pension 
of a hundred pounds a year, and in 1683 he was made 
Collector of the Port of London. All these honors and 


180 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


emoluments he lost in consequence of the Devolution of 
1688 and the accession of William III. He was obliged to 
His Later betake himself again to the stage as the most 
Works ‘ lucrative department of literature ; to accept 
aid from private patrons in place of the royal bounty ; to 
contract with Tonson, the bookseller, to produce and 
deliver ten thousand lines of verse for three hundred 
guineas, and to undertake various jobs of translation for 
the same employer. In short, in his old age Dryden was 
compelled to illustrate almost all the methods by which a lit- 
erary man could live. Nevertheless, his production in these 
years added much to his fame. Whatever may be thought 
of his poetical qualities, at least his literary energy lasted 
well. His work of this time includes his translation of 
Virgil ; many of his translations from Horace, Ovid, Ju- 
venal, Persius, and Homer ; and his renderings into mod- 
ern English verse of stories from Chaucer, among which 
the Palamon and Arcite is best known. These twice-told 
tales were published in 1699, in a volume of Fables , which 
contained also his best lyrical poem, “Alexander’s Feast.” 

During these last years, Dryden lived constantly in Lon- 
don. The coffee-house of that day was the chief place 
of resort for literary men, much as the Paris cafe has 
been in the nineteenth century. At Will’s or Button’s 
the wits gathered for exchange of courtesies or for com- 
His Last bat ; there their admirers or patrons met them ; 

Years. and thence went forth the criticism that made 

or marred the fortunes of rising men as surely as do the 
anonymous reviews in a modern literary journal. Dryden 
frequented Will’s, where he was as much a monarch as 
Ben Jonson had been at the Mermaid, or as, a century 
later, Samuel Johnson was at the Literary Club. It was 
to Will’s that young Pope was brought to gaze on great- 
ness and be inspired ; and it was there also that Dryden 
dismissed his youthful relative with the pitying “ Cousin 
Swift, you will never be a poet.” In an age when the 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


181 


vwjtcu Aft, 


form of poetry was all but rigidly fixed, the acknowledged 
master of that form could be as much of a despot as he 
chose. 

The life of Dryden seems at first sight to have been an 
unheroic, and in some ways an ignoble one. His changes 
of side from Cromwellian to Royalist, from Anglican to 
Catholic, stand out in unfavorable contrast to the devotion 
of men like More and Milton. His concern with the details 
of party strife is sharply opposed to the ideal morality of Sid- 
ney and of Spenser. His indifference and acquiescence in ; 
matters of belief seem tame and watery after the flame-like 
faith of Bunyan. But we must not let such comparisons / 
carry us too far. Dryden illustrates the change from the 
virtues of Elizabethan chivalry and Cromwellian fanaticism, 
to the sober commonplace ethics of an era of reason. His 
tendency to shift his influence to the winning 

., . 6 His Character, 

side was in part the patriotism oi a sensible man 

w'ho argued that it mattered comparatively little whether 

the country was ruled by Protector or King, whether it 

worshipped according to Anglican or Catholic rites, so 

long as it was at peace under institutions which were 

strong enough to curb individual turbulence. Moreover, 

to Dryden it doubtless seemed far less important that he 

should preserve an unspotted consistency in his life, than 

that he should support his family. His was at bottom 

that uninspiring but necessary virtue which chiefly seeks 

to do useful work for a living wage. 

There is also a temptation to extend the first harsh 
judgment of Dry den’s life, to his poetry. It, too, lacks 
elevation. In the first place the material of The Substance 
much of it is borrowed from other writers. But of Hls Poetry - 
we must remember that in his long labors of translation 
and adaptation, Dryden was fulfilling the requirements of 
his age. The time was one not of creation, but of criti- 
cism ; one of steady assimilation of what earlier ages had 
produced. It was especially eager in its effort to diffuse 


182 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and appropriate the ideals of Latin civilization, and in this 
diffusion the work of Dryden counted for much. In the 
second place, the subject matter of his original poetry, the 
affairs of church and state, is remote from what we regard 
as poetic. But here again Dryden was responding to the 
demands of his age. In the days of Charles II. men were 
weary of revolution. To them the kingship and the 
church, Anglican or Catholic, were interesting and beauti- 
ful, because they represented, for the mass of the nation, 
an ideal of individual restraint ; just as to an earlier time 
the boundless self-assertion of Faustus and Tamburlaine 
had been interesting and beautiful for the opposite 
reason. . 

Not only the substance, but the form of Dryden’s verse 
has been a ground for detraction from his fame. Few 
poets of the modern world have maintained such strict 
uniformity. With the exception of tfre lyrics in his 
dramas, of several odes, and of two early poems in the 
heroic stanza, Dryden cultivated steadily the heroic coup- 
The Quality Historically the account of this form has 

of His Poetry. b een gi ve n (page 177). The heroic couplet ap- 
pealed with irresistible force to an age weary of the con- 
ceits of feeble romanticists, and desiring above all, uni- 
formity, precision, and regularity. It was, moreover, a 
vehicle strikingly adapted to the conveyance of the literary 
baggage of the time. When at the close of Religio Laid 
Dryden says. 

And this unpolished rugged verse I chose 

As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose, 

his second line may be taken as referring to his poems in 
general. In them we look for the virtues of prose rather 
than for those of poetry, for the utilitarian qualities, neat- 
ness, clearness, energy, rather than for imaginative sug- 
gestion; we look for epigram in place of metaphor, for 
boldly marked rhythm instead of elusive harmony. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


183 


Although in the great body of his work Dryden kept 
to the couplet form, his odes, and the songs with which 
his dramas are strewn, show that he possessed power over 
a variety of metres. The two odes for Saint Cecilia's Day, 
especially the second, called “ Alexander's Feast," illus- 
trate his skill in making his lines march to the measure of 
his thought. It is true, even in his lyrics Dryden's charm 
is rather one of line and general movement than of phrase 
or word. He has little of the magic and glamour that 
belong to poets of deeper, though perhaps less ample, in- 
spiration. His best quality is artistic and literary, not 
imaginative. 

Dryden was not only the foremost poet, but also the most 
copious dramatist, and the chief critic, of his time. The age 
of the Restoration was, as we have already noted, a period 
of assimilation rather than of creation, a time when men 
were interested in testing the product of earlier ages, and in 
winnowing the good from the bad. This interest accounts 
for the fact that to many of his works Dryden Dryden 

prefixed one or more critical essays in the form as Critic - 

of dedications or prefaces, in which he discussed the lead- 
ing artistic questions of the day. Among these essays the 
most important are “ An Essay of Dramatic Poesy " (1668), 
“ A Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy " (1668), “ Of 
Heroic Plays" (1672), the “ Essay on Satire" (1693), and 
the Preface to the Fables (1699). It is to be noted that 
these writings were all “ occasional," each put forth to an- 
swer a particular purpose; and in the success with which 
they fulfilled their purpose they are one important sign of 
literary progress. The virtue of efficiency in prose style 
was strengthened enormously by Dryden's practice. 

Dryden's prose lacks the personal eccentricity which we 
find in Burton, Browne, and their contemporaries; and it 
is usually without the artificial decoration which marks the 
style of Lyly and Sidney. Dryden did not look upon prose 
as important enough to beautify. He occupied himself 


184 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


with the form as little as might be, except to secure its fit- 
ness for a well-defined end. Moreover, by his adoption of 
Dryden’s the modern sentence in place of the unit of 
Prose. great and unequal length used by Raleigh and 

Milton, Dryden carried out in prose a change exactly anal- 
ogous to that accomplished in verse by his adoption of the 
couplet in place of the stanza. In other words he did for 
prose what he did for poetry : he reduced the unit of treat- 
ment to manageable size ; set an example of correctness ; 
and finally, by his authority, did much to establish such 
a standard of taste as rendered impossible the eccentric- 
ities to which the preceding century had been indul- 
gent. 

In both his poetry and his prose Dryden represents the 
spirit of his age as it showed itself in dealing with its most 
important problems of life and art. He is at bottom a seri- 
ous and intellectual master. For the more naive and un- 
conscious expression of the time we must turn to others. 
Like Elizabeth and Charles I., Charles II. kept in some 
sort a literary court, of which lyric poetry and satire were 
the language. The courtly poets of the time, the succes- 
sors of the cavaliers, caught from the king an attitude of 
moral indifference and social flippancy. In their circles the 
most popular work was a fierce and scurrilous satire upon 
the Puritan, Samuel Butler’s Hudibras. Butler (1612- 
1680) was doubtless meditating his attack during the years 
Butler °I the Protectorate, when he was acting as pri- 
“ Hudibras.” va t e secretary to a Puritan nobleman. Three 
years after the accession of Charles II., he published three 
cantos of a poem in which the vices of the Puritan period, 
hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, and intolerance, are pre- 
sented with savage exaggeration in the person of Sir Hudi- 
bras. This knight, with liis squire Ralpho, passes through 
a series of quixotic adventures, which are continued in 
further instalments of the poem, published in 1664 and 
1678. 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


185 


While Butler and the cavalier poets were embodying the 
mood of the aristocracy, Bunyan was writing his Pilgrim’s 
Progress for the serious lower class, where Puritanism 
still survived. Between these extremes, however, we have 
an order that was to make its presence felt increasingly 
from this time on, the middle or burgher class ; and as 
it happens, this class had, in the late seventeenth cen- 
tury, a representative figure almost as salient as Bunyan. 
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was a busy man of Samuel 

affairs, a clerk of the Navy Board, and later p epys. 

Secretary of the Admiralty under James II. Between 
1660 and 1669 he kept a diary in cipher, which he left 
with his library to Magdalen College, Cambridge. It was 
deciphered and published, at first with omissions, later in 
full, in the course of the nineteenth century, and was 
recognized at once as a personal document of great 
interest. 

Pepys’s diary is scarcely to be called literature. It is a 
transcript of the observations, doings, thoughts, and feel- 
ings of a commonplace burgher, all set down with the 
greatest fidelity. If Pepys goes on a picnic he mentions 
the time of starting, the constituents of the luncheon, 
the substance of the conversation by the way, Pepys>s 

the company he met, the sheep which he saw Diary, 

(“the most pleasant and innocent sight that ever I saw 
in my life ”), the shepherd whose little boy was reading the 
Bible to him, the flowers, the glow-worms which came out 
in the evening, and the slight accident by which he sprained 
his foot. In its detail it reflects the patient, industrious 
habits by which business and science were to thrive in the 
next century, — for Pepys was a scientist and President 
of the Royal Society. In its uniformity of tone, its lack 
of emphasis and dramatic interest, so different from Bun- 
yan’s Grace Abounding , it illustrates again the sober mo- 
dernity which the citizen’s life was beginning to assume. 
In its worldliness, its reflection of perfectly unashamed 


186 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

delight in mere comfort, well-being, and. success, it shows 
the bourgeois ideal of life. In its suggestions of trifling 
moral laxity, it perhaps testifies to the complacence with 
which even safe and honest burghers saw the natural life 
free itself from Puritan scruples. And finally, the pleas- 
ure in his own life, which sustained the author in the 
mechanical toil of recording its phenomena, is to be con- 
nected with the interest in human life in general, which 
constituted the force behind the development of realistic 
fiction in the following century. 

The Restoration Drama 

When the theatres were closed in 1642, the succession 
of great Jacobean dramatists had nearly come to an end, 
Shirley alone being alive. However, the drama retained 
The Heroic its hold 011 the masses ; even under Cromwell, 
Play * the playwright Davenant obtained permission 

to give a play with a musical accompaniment. The Siege 
of Rhodes. To this opera Dryden attributed the begin- 
ning of the dominant fashion of the time in tragedy, the 
heroic play, to which type many of Dryden’s own dramas 
belong. The heroic play, though by no means an imitation 
of French tragedy, owed something to the example of Cor- 
neille, especially its heightening of characters to heroic 
proportions, and probably also its use of rhyme. Dryden 
defended the use of rhyme, in the dedication to one of his 
early plays, on the ground that “it bounds and circum- 
scribes the fancy. For imagination in a poet is a faculty so 
wild and lawless, that like an high ranging spaniel it must 
have clogs tied to it lest it outrun the judgment." This 
philosophy, so typical of the time, did not prevent 
Dryden from pushing his characters into unnatural ex- 
travagance of passion ; a fault which, as it appears in 
The Indian Queen (1664), The Indian Emperor (1665), 
and The Conquest of Granada (1670), was caricatured in 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 187 

The Rehearsal , a famous mock drama by the Duke of 
Buckingham and others. 

In the last of his heroic plays, Aurengzebe (1675), Dryden 
confesses in the prologue that he “ grows weary of his 
long-loved mistress, Rhyme.” Accordingly his Dryden , s Later 
next play. All for Love (1678), a rehandling of Dramas * 
the story of Antony and Cleopatra, he wrote in blank 
verse. This play is commonly regarded as his dramatic 
masterpiece. In addition to his tragedies, Dryden wrote a 
number of comedies in prose, and tragi-comedies in a mixt- 
ure of prose and verse, most of which are too broad for 
modern reading. 

A writer who on two occasions equalled or surpassed 
Dryden, Thomas Otway (1651-1685), was an unsuccessful 
actor, who turned to writing plays. His Don Carlos 
(1675), written in rhymed couplets, won for him his first 
success. When Dryden abandoned rhyme, the world of play- 
wrights changed with him; and Otway's second Thomas 
important play, The Orphan (1680), was in otwa y- 
blank verse. The situation, turning upon the love of two 
brothers for Monimia, the orphan ward of their father, is 
one which Ford might have created. In working it out, 
Otway is relentless ; he has evolved from it one of the cruelest 
of English tragedies. In his power of deepening the hor- 
ror by a lighter, simpler touch, pitiful as a strain of music, 
he reminds us 1 again of the later Elizabethans, especially 
of Webster. Even more successful than The Orphan was 
Venice Preserved (1682), in which, as in The Orphan , 
Otway caught something of the greatness of handling 
characteristic of an earlier time. His plays have the gen- 
uine passion which Dryden lacked, and they are not marred 
by the distortions of human life and character that abound 
both in Dryden and in the Jacobean dramatists. 

The tragedy of the Restoration has, in the main, only a 
literary interest, as a survival of the great dramatic period, 
and as an illustration of foreign influences. The Resto- 


188 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ration comedy, however, is a genuine reflection of the tem- 
per, if not of the actual life, of the upper classes of the 
nation ; and as such it has a sociological as well as a literary 
interest. As practised by Shakespeare, English comedy had 
been romantic in spirit. However seriously it had been 
concerned with the essentials of human nature, it had had 
comparatively little to do with the circumstances of actual 
Restoration human life. In Ben Jonson and Middleton, 
comedy. an d especially in the latest of the Jacobeans, 
Shirley, we find more realistic treatment of the setting, 
the social surroundings, of the play. Following their 
lead, and stimulated by the example of Moli&re, the come- 
dians of the Restoration devoted themselves specifically 
to picturing the external details of life, the fashions of 
the time, its manners, its speech, its interests. For scene 
they turned to the most interesting places they knew, the 
drawing-rooms, the coffee-houses, the streets and gardens of 
London. Their characters were chiefly people of fashion, 
and their plots, for the most part, were love intrigues ; both 
often enough improbable and uninteresting. For these 
deficiencies, however, the dramatists made up by the brill- 
iancy of their dialogue. In tendency these plays are, 
almost without exception, immoral. They represent the 
reaction of the play-going public against Puritanism. They 
are anti-social, in that they represent social institutions, 
particularly marriage, in an obnoxious or ridiculous light ; 
but they are not romantic or revolutionary. There is in 
them never an honest protest against institutions, never a 
genuine note of revolt. Conventions are accepted to be 
played with and attacked, merely by way of giving oppor- 
tunity for clever, corrupt talk, or of giving point to an 
intrigue. 

The first of this school of comedians was Sir George Eth- 
erege, an Englishman who had been educated at Paris, 
and who there had seen the comedies of Moli&re. Etherege 
was followed by William Wycherley (1640-1715), whose 


THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 


189 


best plays are The Country Wife (1673), and The Plain 
Dealer (1674). Both are borrowed in outline from Mo- 
li&re, but their moral atmosphere is that of the corrupt 
court of Charles II., where Wycherley was a 
favorite. William Congreve (1670-1729) was and C con- y 
a far more brilliant playwright. His master- greve * 
pieces. Love for Love and The Way of the World , appeared 
in 1695 and 1700. Congreve carries the interest of dia- 
logue, of the verbal fence between character and character, 
to its extreme development ; less gratuitously lax than 
Wycherley, he is, notwithstanding, too reckless, cynical, 
and corrupt for modern readers. 

It has been pointed out that one effect of the age that 
succeeded the Restoration, was to organize society, to re- 
strain the license of the individual. The anti-social influ- 
ence of the plays of the time was clearly perceived, and 
protest was not lacking. It took time for the 
protest to gather force, in face of the spirit of of Jeremy 
wild reaction against all that savored of Puri- 


tanism; but in 1698 a clergyman, Jeremy Collier, published 
his Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the 
English Stage , and Dryden, who was one of the dramatists 
particularly attacked, admitted the justice of the rebuke. 
Its immediate effect was not sufficient to do away with the 
coarseness of Restoration comedy, which appears to the 
full in Sir John Vanbrugh (1666-1726) : but an improve- 
ment is noticeable in the works of George Farquhar (1678- 
1707), the last of the school ; and in Steele's plays the 
drama is in full alliance with the forces which were mak- 
ing for morality and decent living. 


CHAPTER X 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE REIGN OF CLASSICISM 

The history of the early part of the eighteenth century 
shows a continuation of th 4 e social and literary forces which 
had begun with the Restoration. It was a period in which 
imagination slept, and in which the sense of the temporal 
realities of life was strong. It was a period of 
character- criticism rather than of creation, a period in 
which regularity and perfection of literary form 
were of more importance than originality of thought. It 
was an age of interest in the development of society and of 
institutions, rather than in the assertion of the individual. 
In this particular, indeed, it went beyond the Restoration 
period. We have seen that the literature, especially the 
drama, of this latter epoch, was marked by something of 
the license of the Renaissance. The protest of Jeremy 
Collier against. the stage, in 1698, was typical of the attitude 
of the new century, which realized and feared the anti- 
social effect of vice. These tendencies toward realism of 
subject matter, toward technical perfection of form, and 
toward social usefulness of purpose, are notably illustrated 
by the three chief figures of the literature of the age of 
Queen Anne, — Swift, Pope, and Addison. 

The first of them and the greatest, Jonathan Swift, was 
born in Ireland of English parents, in 1667. He was a 
Jonathan posthumous son, and he grew up to share his 
mother’s poverty. He was sent to the Uni- 
versity of Dublin, where, as he says, he was “ stopped of 
his degree for dulness and unsufficiency ; and at last hardly 
admitted in a manner little to his credit.” In 1689 he 

190 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


191 


left Ireland to take a position as under-secretary to a dis- 
tant relative. Sir William Temple, with whom he remained 
intermittently for some years, reading aloud to his patron, 
writing at dictation, keeping accounts, and cursing his 
fate. While in this service he wrote The Battle of the 
Books , a contribution to the controversy which Temple 
was carrying on with Bentley, the great scholar, as to the 
comparative merit of ancient and modern writers. About 
this time, also, he wrote a satire on the divisions of Chris- 
tianity, called A Tale of a Tuh. Neither work was pub- 
lished until 1704. With Temple's help he entered the 
church ; and after his patron's death he returned to Ire- 
land as chaplain to Lord Berkeley, by whom he was given 
the living of Laracor. 

Then began the great period of Swift's life, the time 
of his political power. During the reign of William III., 
party strife was hitter between the Whigs, who His political 
supported the King in his foreign policy of Career * 
resistance to Louis XIV. of France, and the Tories, who 
opposed him ; and this struggle was continued in the 
reign of Queen Anne. Almost all the prominent literary 
men of the time were engaged on one side or the other. 
Swift, who was frequently in London promoting his can- 
didacy for offices in the church as they fell vacant, at first 
wrote on the Whig side ; but in 1710 he joined the Tories, 
who were just coming into power. The Tory ministry, 
of which Lord Bolingbroke was a member, was resolved to 
stop the war with France ; and in defence of this policy 
Swift put out one of his strongest political writings. The 
Conduct of the Allies. His life during these years is re- 
flected in his Journal to Stella , a daily account of his 
doings which he wrote for his friend, Esther Johnson. 
Here we find Swift playing the part in which he most 
delighted, that of a man of affairs, active, successful, and 
powerful. He records with gusto his hours spent with the 
rulers of the country ; their politeness, and his own half- 


192 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


contemptuous familiarity ; his ability to serve his fri«nds 
and to punish his enemies. In 1713, as the price of his 
support of the Tory government, he was named Dean of 
St. Patrick’s in Dublin, a promotion little to his taste. 
The next year the Tories went out of power, discredited 
by Bolingbroke’s intrigues with the Pretender; and Swift 
returned to Ireland. 

Here his unconquerable activity found vent in de- 
fending the Irish, or rather the Englishmen who lived in 
Ireland, from the careless tyranny of the government. In 
this endeavor he published The Drapier’s Letters, most of 
ms Later them in 1724, as a protest against debasing the 
Life. Irish coinage. In 1726 he took the manuscript 

of his most famous work, Gulliver’s Travels, to London 
for publication, and the next year he returned thither to 
taste the pleasure of a great literary success. This, as all 
else in his life, seemed to turn only to disappointment. 
In 1728 Miss Johnson, the “Stella” of the Journal, died. 
Whether or not it is true, as some think, that Swift was 
secretly married to her, she was his closest friend, and her 
death left him desolate. As the years passed, his hatred 
for the world grew more intense, and his satire more bitter. 
A disease from which he had suffered at intervals gained 
rapidly upon him, resulting in deafness and giddiness ; 
and he suffered also from attacks of epilepsy and insanity. 
After years of gloom and agony, death came slowly upon 
him. He died in 1745. 

It is evident from this narrative that, to a great extent, 
Swift’s writings were occasional, and grew out of the cir- 
cumstances of his life. He was not a professional writer ; 
with one or two exceptions, his works were published 
Swift’s Prac-' anonymously. He was a man of affairs, who 
ticai Nature, became a man of letters because literature was 
a means by which affairs could be directed. His writings 
must be regarded, then, as one expression among others, 
of energy turned to practical ends ; as one evidence among 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


193 


His Activity. 


others, of his preternatural activity. For Swift lived hard. 
“ There is no such thing,” he wrote to a friend, “ as a fine 
old gentleman ; if the man had a mind or body worth a 
farthing they would have worn him out long ago.” 

This need of exercise shows itself not only in his serious 
preoccupation with the life of his time, but also in his 
gigantic sense of play. The anecdotes related of him by 
his earlier biographers are legion, most of them turning 
upon the translation of some whim into prac- 
tical form, usually as a grotesque joke. The 
tale of his dispersing a crowd gathered to witness an 
eclipse, by sending a message that, according to the Dean’s 
orders, the eclipse would be put off for a day ; of his im- 
personating a poor usher at a reception, to draw the con- 
tempt of a rich fool ; and, of his disguising himself as 
a fiddler at a beggar’s wedding, to discover the arts by 
which impostors live, — all these bear testimony to that rest- 
lessness which could not be satisfied by work alone. With 
this lighter side of Swift’s nature are to be connected the 
works by which he is chiefly known, his satires — The Tale 
of a Tab and Gulliver’s Travels. 

Once, indeed, this love of a practical joke was directly 
responsible for some of Swift’s most characteristic writing. 
A certain Partridge was in the habit of issuing an almanac, 
with predictions of events to fall out in the The Partridge 
next year. This impostor Swift exposed in a Predlctlons - 
set of “ Predictions for the year 1708,” one of which was 
the death of Partridge himself, who, according to the 
prophecy, should “ infallibly die upon the 29th of March, 
about eleven at night, of a raging fever.” This pamphlet 
was published over the name Isaac Bickerstaff. On the 
30tli of March, Swift published a letter supposed to be 
written by a revenue officer to a certain nobleman, giving 
an account of Partridge’s last days and death. He also 
wrote “An Elegy of Mr. Partridge.” Of course, Par- 
tridge hastened in triumph to assure the world that he 


194 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


was not dead; but Swift promptly came back with “ A 
Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff,” in which, after rebuking 
Partridge for his impudence, he proved by various logical 
demonstrations that Partridge certainly died “within half 
an hour of the time foretold.” n/ 

This skit is broadly characteristic of the whole spirit 
and method of Swift’s work, in that it exposes a sham or 
an evil by setting up a more monstrous imposition against 
it, and defends the latter with ironical seriousness ; the 
whole being permeated so thoroughly by malicious and 
contemptuous fooling that one hesitates to say whether it 
may or may not have been written with a certain amount 
Swift , s of reforming zeal. In Swift’s works generally 

Method. there is this double aspect of earnestness and 

play. In “A Modest Proposal, for preventing the chil- 
dren of the poor in Ireland from being a burden,” the 
terrible suffering in Ireland is revealed in the mocking 
suggestion that the poor should devote themselves to rear- 
ing children to be killed and eaten. A Tale of a Tub , 
with its bitter reflections upon the spiritual history of 
man since the advent of Christianity, is on its face the 
story of three stupid brothers quarrelling over the inheri- 
tance of their father. Gulliver's Travels is, in form, a sort 
of Robinson Crusoe, yet it is full of satiric intention. 

Gulliver is shipwrecked first at Lilliput, where the in- 
habitants are six inches high, — except their emperor, 
“ taller by almost the breadth of my nail than any of his 
court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the 
beholders.” Here the satire obviously consists in showing 
“Gulliver’s human motives at work on a small scale, and in 
Travels.” suggesting, by the likeness of the Lilliputians to 
ourselves, the littleness of human affairs. The arts by 
which the officers of the government keep their places, such 
as cutting capers on a tight-rope for the entertainment of 
the emperor, remind us of the quality of statesmanship 
both in Swift’s day and our own ; the dispute over the 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


195 


question at which end an egg should properly be broken, 
that plunged Lilliput into civil war, is a comment on the 
seriousness of party divisions in the greater world. Gulli- 
ver's next voyage, to Brobdingnag, brings him to a peo- 
ple as large in comparison with man as the Lilliputians 
are small. Once more his adventures are a tale of won- 
der, behind which lurks Swift's contempt for humanity. 
Gulliver tells the giant beings by whom he is surrounded, 
and in comparison with whom he is a mere manikin, of 
the world from which he has come. Among other things, 
he tells of the invention of gunpowder, and the use of in- 
struments of warfare. “ The king was struck with horror 
at the description I had given of those terrible engines. 
He was amazed how so impotent and grovelling an insect 
as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhu- 
man ideas." Finally, after a third voyage to Laputa and 
other curious places, Gulliver makes his fourth journey, 
to the land of the Houyhnhnms, where horses are the self- 
conscious rulers and masters, and where the human animal 
is in a state of servitude and degradation. Here again Gul- 
liver relates to his incredulous hosts the follies and cruelties 
of men. But the fiercest satire is in the picture of the 
Yahoo, the human beast, in which the worst of man is 
once for all told. 

This double point of view, this wavering between jest 
and earnest, is not only superficially characteristic of 
Swift’s writing ; it seems also to have been deeply rooted 
in his mental constitution. It is almost as if he could 
never be quite sure that the world was worth his zeal ; as if 
he never wished to compromise himself as a reformer, or 
to cut himself off from the possibility of falling back upon 
jest. This attitude on his part must be understood in 
order to apprehend his relation to the times in which he 
lived. As has been said, one task of the eighteenth cen- 
tury was to revise and enforce standards of taste and living. 
Toward this task Swift took two opposite positions. In 


196 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


his contempt for man he could, when convenient, defend 
social and intellectual conventions, in the belief that shams 
and delusions were restraints necessary to the orderly 
government of the world ; that they were, so to speak, 
wiles by which the intelligent Houyhnhnms 
tude toward controlled the unspeakable Yahoos about them, 
his Time. ^ en ft j s quite open to him to turn about 

and cry, “ What business has the world of Yahoos with 
standards at all ? Man being what he is, decency and 
comeliness are but conventions.” And he proceeds to 
attack them. He takes a malicious joy in shocking per- 
sons whose characters are founded upon mere respectabil- 
ity. To this instinct for revolt must be ascribed the 
obscenity with which, especially in his poems. Swift in- 
sulted the growing modesty and propriety of his country- 
men. 

It is the thoroughness of Swift’s pessimism, his complete 
distrust of the world, that gives to him his singularity and 
His Distinc- P ecu li ar impressiveness among English writers. 
tion * It would be fruitless to deny that in this pessi- 

mism there is something stimulating, something awaken- 
ing ; perhaps because it is a change from the conventional 
mode in which we are taught to look at the world. The 
real distinction in his view, his disregard of the accepted, 
the trite, the commonplace, all serve to startle us into 
eager attention. His keenness calls for answering alert- 
ness in ourselves ; his suggestiveness is tonic ; even his 
coarseness contains something of vigorous criticism that 
will not let us rest in conventional opinions, but bids us 
prove all things and call everything by its true name. 

The practical spirit which Swift brought to his writing, 
his intention to make it serve a turn and accomplish a 
His style Purpose, is reflected in his style. First among 

his merits as a writer is his clearness. Further, 
his contempt for all kinds of sham led him to despise liter- 
ary affectation ; directness and simplicity are the virtues by 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


197 


which he sets most store. Indeed, if anything, his style is 
too severe, too sternly practical, too reserved, too dry. It 
represents men and things in too hard a light, with too 
sharp an outline, without the softening and color which 
come from a sympathetic temperament. Yet with all this 
practical downrightness. Swift's style is full of finesse. A 
more subtle instrument, capable of more delicate persi- 
flage, of more elaborate innuendo, it would be difficult 
to find. So little obvious are its devices, so persistent 
is its plainness, that we cease to suspect it ; but the writer 
neither slumbers nor sleeps. Always conscious of an end 
beyond the admitted one, always advancing on it stroke 
by stroke, he surprises us out of the security into which 
we have been lulled, and startles us into keenness and 
nervousness by the paradox which lurked all the while be- 
hind the sober, grave exterior. Of obvious decoration, 
such as balance, rhythm, antithesis — the half poetic quali- 
ties of earlier prose — Swift has little. Indeed, it is clear 
that the nakedness and simplicity of his style were neces- 
sary to the rapidity and address of his attack. In the 
heavy rhetorical panoply of Euphues or Jeremy Taylor he 
would have been as helpless as David in the armor of Saul. 
Absolute, unmitigated prose he wrote — the quintessence 
of prose. 

The bulk of Swift's political writing appeared in pam- 
phlets, but he used also the periodical form ; he conducted 
the paper in the Tory interest, called The Examiner, to 
which Addison, the chief literary man among Periodical 
the Whigs, replied in the Whig Examiner. Llterature - 
The idea of the periodical appearance of a party organ was 
suggested by the newspapers, of which the first had ap- 
peared in 1622, Butter's Weekly Neives from Italy and 
Germanie. These early newspapers were at first little 
more than meagre chronicles of events. Gradually they 
came to include discussion of lighter matters, chiefly in 
the form of answers to questions. Defoe's Review (see 


198 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


page 232) contained a separate department called “ Advice 
from the Scandalous Club, being a weekly history of Non- 
sense, Impertinence, Vice, and Debauchery.” That prov- 
ince of journalism which lies between news and politics, was 
not adequately possessed, however, until, in 1709, there 
appeared a periodical of which the object was to “ observe 
upon the pleasurable as well as the busy part of mankind.” 
This was The Tatler, founded by Richard Steele (1672- 
1729), who was soon joined in the enterprise by his friend, 
Joseph Addison (1672-1719). 

The Tatler appeared three times a week. Each number 
consisted of several letters dated from the different cof- 
fee-houses of London ; those from the Saint James being 
devoted to foreign and domestic affairs, those from Will's 
to poetry and the drama, those from White’s 

The Tatler. r ( . 

to “ gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment. 
There were also papers dated “ From my own apart- 
ment,” which dealt with miscellaneous topics, personal 
or social. It was in these last that the authors carried 
out most fully the object which they set before them- 
selves, “ to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the 
disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recom- 
mend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and 
our behavior.” Although The Tatler appealed to the 
public without distinction of party, it was colored by 
Steele’s Whig views. Accordingly, when the authors 
wished to avoid politics altogether they abandoned The 
Tatler , replacing it by The Spectator (1711), in which Ad- 
dison took the chief part. 

Although Addison and Steele are thus remembered for 
their effort to lead literature away from politics, both were 
party men. Addison first attracted notice while 
at Oxford, by a Latin poem on the Treaty of 
Ryswick ; in recognition of this effort he received a pen- 
sion of three hundred pounds a year, enabling him to travel 
abroad. After his return, the Whigs needed a poet to 


Joseph 

Addison. 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


199 


celebrate the Duke of Marlborough's victory of Blenheim ; 
and the commission fell to Addison. His poem, “ The 
Campaign/' which contained one very effective panegyric 
passage, gained for its author various honors and pre- 
ferments ; and until his death in 1719 he was almost 
constantly in office. Indeed, Addison's career affords the 
best example of the high rewards which the service of 
party offered in the early eighteenth century to literary 
men. Even his tragedy, Cato , which was presented in 
1713, owed its great popularity to a supposed parallel be- 
tween the struggles of parties at Rome and the contem- 
porary political situation in England ; and as neither party 
could allow the other to take to itself the platitudes about 
liberty with which the play is strewn, Whigs and Tories 
alike attended the performances, vying with each other in 
the violence of their applause. 

No character in English letters is better known or more 
generally admired than Addison. This power of attracting 
admiration is largely due to a certain classic quality which 
showed itself in his literary ideals, in his pure, Addison’s 
regular style, in the just appreciation of his Character, 
criticism, and in his singularly correct sense of conduct. 
His taste was nearly faultless, and taste did for him what 
it should do for anyone ; it saved him from blunders and 
follies. In his life as in his writing, what he did was well 
done. Every stroke that went to the presentation of his 
character in bodily form seems to have been laid on with 
conscious care and conscious pride. The last touch of all, 
as he lay on his death-bed, and turning to his step-son 
bade him " See in what peace a Christian can die," ex- 
presses the mood in which his whole life was lived. 

This mood colored most of Addison's writing. The pa- 
pers which he contributed to The Tatter, The Spectator , 
and other periodicals, are for the most part essays in the 
art of living. They illustrate the practical nature of his 
own culture, his easy, skilled mastery of life. To the 


200 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


world of the eighteenth century, with its crudeness, its 
coarseness, its grotesqueness, as revealed in the drawings of 
Hogarth, Addison came much as Matthew Arnold came to 
the later nineteenth century, with its materialism and its 
trust in machinery. Both were missionaries, 
Addison the more successful because the more 
tactful. His task too was simpler, to enforce ideas of 
civilization, and in particular to overcome the anti-social 
tendencies of both Puritan and Cavalier, preserving the 
zeal for conduct of the former without his gloom and in- 
tolerance, and the lightness and gayety of the latter without 
his license. Thus we find many of AddisorPs papers directed 
against the coarser vices of the time, against gambling, 
drinking, swearing, indecency of conversation, cruelty, 
practical joking, duelling. Others attack the triviality of 
life, special follies and foibles of dress, of manners, or of 
thought ; others, the lack of order and comfort in the life 
of the community. Addison cared also for the literary cul- 
tivation of his readers, as is shown by such papers as the 
famous series of criticisms on Milton. Finally, he made 
a novel contribution to literature in a series of sketches of 
character and contemporary types, — of himself as the Spec- 
tator, of Sir Andrew Freeport the merchant, of Sir Roger 
de Coverley the country gentleman, of Will Honeycomb 
the man of fashion. These figures typified conveniently 
the interests of the public to which The Spectator appealed ; 
hut more than this they define themselves as persons, fitting 
members of the great company of characters who live in 
English fiction from Chaucer to George Meredith. One of 
them at least, Sir Roger de Coverley, to whose presenta- 
tion both Addison and Steele contributed, is drawn with 
genuine affection, as an embodiment of healthy, kindly, 
natural virtue, touched with just enough humor to make 
the picture convincing and wholly winning. 

In his treatment of these various subjects Addison dis- 
plays the graces of style which are the expression of his 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


201 


His 

Method o 


character. He has perfect confidence in his position, 
and in his style sureness goes hand in hand with absolute 
lightness of touch. His sense of humor saves him from put- 
ting himself on the defensive by over-emphasis. Even such 
a serious subject as the separation between men 
on political grounds, he treats by a playful com- 
parison with the fashion of ladies in wearing plaster patches 
of different shapes on their faces. This easy tone comes 
from Addison's moderation and reasonableness, and from 
his genuine good-nature. Satirist though he is, he is never 
misanthropic. The difference between his satire and Swift's 
appears in the contrast between his bantering analysis of a 
“ Coquette's Heart," and Swift's savage “ Letter to a Young 
Lady." 

Technically, Addison's style shows how rapidly English 
prose was approaching its perfection. For the more regu- 
lar virtues, clearness, facility, grace, it has al- His 

ways been a model. Its best encomium was style * 

pronounced by Dr. Johnson when he wrote, “ Whoever 
wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, 
and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and 
nights to the volumes of Addison." 

Despite the close connection between Addison and Steele, 
in friendship, political interests, and literary work, the two 
men were very different. Addison's father was Addison and 
a clergyman. Addison himself intended to take steele - 
orders, and throughout his life showed something of the 
remoteness and coldness of clerical culture. “ He looked," 
as a contemporary said with some scorn, “like a parson in 
a tie-wig." Steele, on the contrary, was for some years a 
soldier, and never lost the bearing of his profession. He 
was Captain Steele anc wore a sword to the end of his 
days. 

Steele's life was a miscellaneous one, filled with all sorts 
of ventures, literary, political, and commercial. He left 
Oxford without his degree, to enlist as a soldier. He for- 


J 


202 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


sook the army to become an active pamphleteer and jour- 
nalist in the interest of the Whigs, by whom he was given 
various government positions. He was elected to Parlia- 
steeie’s ment, but was expelled from the House for writ- 
character. j n g a political pamphlet. He wrote several plays, 
and was for a time director of Drury Lane Theatre. Alto- 
gether his life was a thing of fragments. His character, 
too, showed certain flaws and lapses, faults of a generous 
spontaneous nature ; and to these his writings in a measure 
served to call attention. While a soldier he wrote The 
Christian Hero, a manual of personal and domestic virtues ; 
his plays were a bit superfluously moral ; in The Tatter he 
appeared as a preacher. This discrepancy between his 
personal life and the tenor of much of his writings, laid 
Steele open to gibe and sneer; but there is an honest 
human quality about his inconsistencies, that gives him, 
after all, a charm which his greater contemporaries lack. 
Whether as Christian or as man of the world, Steele was 
always himself, and if he did not erect a palatial character 
like Addison's, he built a genial dwelling-place where all 
the world was welcome. y" 

The inconsistency in Steele's life is reflected in his style. 
He has two manners, one eminent, gracious, dignified, 
the style which corresponds to his moods of elevation and 
His style didacticism ; the other careless, flexible, free, 

like his ordinary life. This second manner is 
best seen in his letters to his wife, which, in their delight- 
ful frankness and their abandonment to the feeling of the 
moment, show him in his most attractive aspect. They 
prove that the lightness and ease which mark The Tatter 
and The Spectator, qualities which in Addison were the 
fruit of cultivation, were entirely native to Steele. 

Addison and Steele were moralists, and their doctrine is 
in a high degree characteristic of their time. It deals with 
the material and superficial aspects of living ; it represents 
the effort of literature to support the conventions in accord- 





<? 




THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


203 


ance with which life was ordering itself. This attitude, 
however wholesome and necessary, involved a tendency to 
set an excessive value on outward behavior as distinct from 
character, a tendency which becomes more marked in a 
writer of somewhat later date. Lord Chesterfield (1694- 
1773). The principles of good form, for which Chester- 
field's name is a by-word, he expounds fully in his Letters 
to His Son, which set forth a system of conduct based 
frankly upon scepticism as to the reality of morals. His- 
torically Chesterfield represents the extreme _ _ 
swing of the pendulum that was set in motion field, 
by Steele and Addison. With him the decorum and ur- 
banity inculcated by The Spectator have become the major 
ends of life, the chief business of a gentleman. 

Chesterfield typifies one phase of the rather shallow 
positivism of the century, its refusal to go behind what 
appealed immediately to the senses, to believe in what it 
could not see. Politeness can be seen, felt, valued ; hence it 
is real. Goodness of heart, virtue, may exist or not ; we 
cannot be sure : they are so easy to simulate, so hard to 
test, that the wise man prefers to put no trust in them, 
and confines his interest to deportment. Such is Chester- 
field's view. 

There is no sharp dividing line between the prose 
writers and the poets of the early eighteenth century. 
The practical spirit of the age, which limited prose and 
the realm of art to the interests of actual life, Poetry ‘ 
made the material of prose and poetry much the same ; 
and owing to the character of couplet verse, the typical 
virtues of poetry were not very different from those of 
prose. Of the writers already discussed. Swift and Ad- 
dison were poets as well as prose men. The greatest 
poet of the period, however, the direct continuator of the 
tradition of Dryden, and the most brilliant man of let- 
ters of the early part of the century, was Alexander 
Pope. 


204 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Pope was bom in 1688, of Catholic parents. By reason of 
the sweeping laws against the entrance of Catholics into 
public service, he was shut out from the ordinary career of 
Englishmen in Parliament, the church, or the army. In 
consequence he was among his contemporaries almost the 
sole example of an author who was entirely a man of letters ; 
the events of his life are altogether literary events. He be- 
gan his career early. His Pastorals, written when he was 
Alexander seventeen, were published in 1709. The Essay 
Pope " on Criticism two years later, attracted Addison's 

notice ; and Pope's other early poems, “Windsor Forest," 
“ Eloisa to Abelard," and above all The Rape of the Loch, 
of which the first draft appeared in 1712, confirmed him in 
his position at the head of English poetry. About 1713 
he undertook the greatest venture of his life, the transla- 
tion of Homer, which he did not complete until 1725. 
One important effect of the translation, on Pope's own 
career and on the literature of the time, is to be noted. 
From the publishers and from his sales to subscribers. Pope 
obtained more than five thousand pounds for the Iliad, 
and two-thirds of this sum for the Odyssey (on which most 
of the work was done by others), — much the greatest 
pecuniary reward which up to that time had been received 
by any English author. It made Pope independent of 
patronage and politics ; and it marks the opening of a new 
era in the social status of authors, one in which they looked 
to the public alone for support. 

The profits of his translation enabled Pope to buy a 
small estate at Twickenham, on the Thames near London. 
This he fitted up in the mock classical style which the 
age affected in other things besides literature. He subdued 
nature to taste by landscape-gardening, until his few acres 
His Later must have seemed a miniature Versailles. He 
Llfe * scattered statuary and temples about in artistic 

contrast to the woods and lawns ; and as his crowning 
achievement he built his famous grotto ornamented with 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


205 


mirrors. At Twickenham Pope lived the remainder of his 
life, secluded from the cares and struggles of the world, 
but very constantly occupied with his own relations to it. 
Here he entertained his friends, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, 
and others, with whom he formed a literary partnership 
known as the Scriblerus Club. It was in connection with 
this partnership that he published in 1728 a great onslaught 
on their literary foes, entitled The Dunciad. At Twick- 
enham also Pope saw much of Bolingbroke, and under his 
influence wrote the Essay on Man , published in 1732 and 
1734. The remainder of his work consists of the Moral 
Epistles (satires in imitation of Horace), the “Epistle to 
Dr. Arbuthnot,” which is Pope's chief defence of him- 
self, and the “ Epilogue to the Satires.” These were pub- 
lished before 1737, after which date Pope wrote little. He 
died in 1744. 

Pope's claim to the first place among the poets of his 
time cannot be gainsaid, but his true place among the 
poets of all time is a matter of dispute. At the outset it 
must be recognized that certain sources of power were de- 
nied him, partly in consequence of the nature of the period 
in which he lived, partly by reason of the deficiencies of 
his own temperament. The age was one in which sym- 
pathy for nature and for humanity was limited, and in 
this matter Pope shared the blindness of his age. More- 
over, Pope was from birth sickly and feeble ; strong pas- 
sion, great emotion, richness of life, were beyond his ex- 
perience. His bodily ailments checked the growth of his 
character ; he remained to the end a suspicious, deceit- 
ful child. Accordingly, we miss in his poetry Pope , s 
greatness of feeling for the natural world and Limitatlons - 
for the world of man, as well as greatness of human per- 
sonality. That such a man should become a poet at all is 
as wonderful as that a deaf man should be a composer, 
or a blind man a sculptor. That he should be the 
typical poet of his age shows how limited was the con- 


' 206 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ception which then prevailed of the nature and function 
of poetry. 

But though certain qualities which we expect to find in 
poetry are necessarily absent in Pope, these were replaced, 
at least for his contemporaries, by others. First of all, 
he owed his success to his marvellous skill in directing 
the sole recognized vehicle of poetry, the heroic couplet. 
His Poetic He declares that as a child he “lisped in num- 
Quanties. bers, for the numbers came.” But he was not 
satisfied with precocious amateurism. One of his earliest 
friends and critics, William Walsh, pointed out to him that 
“ though we had had several great poets we never had any 
one great poet that was correct.” Correctness, accordingly, 
Pope made his aim from the first. Correctness requires 
patience, and genius for taking pains Pope had in abun- 
dance. Nor did he sacrifice to mere exactness of metre 
and rhyme the other virtues of couplet verse, compres- 
sion, epigrammatic force, and brilliancy of diction. Still, 
it is not to be wondered at that, in the long process of 
polishing and revising to suit a standard of extreme 
nicety, he lost something of the spontaneity of his first 
attempts. 

The importance of technical qualities in the eyes of 
Pope’s public is attested by the success of the Essay on 
Criticism , in which he set forth the artistic principles of 
the time with special reference to poetry. In this discus- 
sion he expresses the chief canon of the age in the direction 
to follow Nature, but Nature methodized by rules, for 
“to copy Nature is to copy them.” The substance of the 
poem is made up of commonplaces, for Pope and his 
“The Essay rea( ^ ers believed that there was nothing new 
on cnti- under the sun ; but these commonplaces are 

cisni* * * jl 

given the most apt, the most chiselled form, a 
form in which they are fitted to survive as part of the com- 
mon wisdom of the race. 

Pope’s comprehension of the artistic demands of his time, 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


207 


and his rhetorical skill, fitted him admirably for the work 
which took up most of the middle years of his life, that of 
translation. As has been noted, the age was one which 
depended for material largely on more creative Pope’s 
epochs in the past, but which, confident in its Homer, 
own civilization, insisted on having that material treated 
in accordance with its own taste. Of this adaptation Pope 
did much. He translated from Ovid, Horace, and Statius ; 
and he modernized Chaucer and Donne. But the most 
notable of all his attempts in this direction is his transla- 
tion of Homer. The attitude of the eighteenth century 
toward the greatest of the classics is shown by a line in the 
Essay on Criticism, which declares that Homer and Nat- 
ure are the same, the highest object of study and imita- 
tion. Pope’s own knowledge of Homer was second-hand 
and inaccurate ; he was an indifferent Greek scholar, and 
was forced to depend on Latin and English translations. 
But the impossibility of his making a literally faithful 
translation left him the freer to turn the material of the 
Greek poems into the form in which it was most fitted to 
become a part of the culture of his own time. Not only 
does Homer, in Pope’s hands, become an eighteenth century 
poet, by virtue of his submission to the literary fashions of 
the day, — the heroic couplet, and conventional poetic dic- 
tion, — but even the characters, the manners, the ethical 
ideals of primitive Greece are run over into eighteenth 
century moulds. Just as to the cloudy mediaeval imagina- 
tion the heroes of Troy became knights, so to Pope’s more 
enlightened understanding they are statesmen and party 
leaders, treating each other with parliamentary courtesy, 
and talking of virtue, patriotism, and fame, as glibly and 
eloquently as Bolingbroke himself. In the loftier parts of 
Homer’s poetry, Pope’s style has a certain appropriateness. 
It is in the level passages of narrative and description, where 
the simple material will not take the polish of brilliant dic- 
tion and epigram, that Pope falls lamentably short of his 


208 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


original. Yet with all deductions, his Homer is an amaz- 
ing performance, perhaps the most complete translation, or 
rather adaptation, in existence ; a tour de force made possi- 
ble by the definiteness and precision of eighteenth century 
art, and by the confidence of the age in its own ideals. 

The works of Pope thus far mentioned are chiefly re- 
markable for their literary qualities ; they show him as the 
master of his form. But even more important is the group 
of poems in which, with no loss of artistic finish, he dealt 
directly with the life of his time. Of these The Rape 
of the Loch stands first. The poem was suggested by a 
trivial occurrence, the rude behavior of Lord Petre in cut- 
ting a lock from the head of Miss Ferinor. Only the ex- 
“ The Rape of ce ssive interest of the age in social matters, com- 
the Lock. bined with the sympathetic genius of a poet, 
could have made such gossip as this outlast the centuries. 
Pope wrote first a rapid account of the card-party at Hamp- 
ton at which the theft took place. Later he expanded the 
poem by introducing the sylphs, who guard the lady's bed, 
make her toilet, and attend her in public, — admirable 
suggestions of the artifice which directed each act, how- 
ever trivial, of a belle of Queen Anne's day. The Rape of 
the Loch is not only a satire on society ; it is a witty 
parody of the heroic style in poetry. Even the verse form 
is treated humorously, especially through its tendency 
toward anti-climax, as in the lines, 

Here thou, great Anna ! whom three realms obey, 

Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea. 

In The Rape of the Loch the satire is general, and, on 
the whole, good-natured. Many of Pope's poems, how- 
ever, are intensely personal, and grew out of the circum- 
stances of his life. As has been said already, his char- 
acter was not a great one. We listen in vain in his poetry 
for the deeper notes of individual human experience. But 
his lack of absorption in his inner life made him morbidly 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


209 


sensitive in his superficial contact with the world. It is 
pathetic to note the minute, intense interest which he 
took in his trivial existence, in his small loves pope’s 
and hates. No man ever had more elaborate Charact er. 
relations with people than Pope, or got more out of his 
friends, or changed more often from friendship to enmity, 
or pursued his enemies with more unwearied spite. His 
biography is largely a record of his personal relations with 
Wycherley, with Swift, with Addison, with Arbuthnot, and 
with Bolingbroke ; and of his literary enmities with men 
too numerous and generally too obscure for mention. Two 
of his old friends, Wycherley and Swift, when both were 
mentally incapable, he tricked by putting out garbled ver- 
sions of his correspondence with them. The story of his 
method of getting these letters before the public without 
appearing to be responsible for the publication is charac- 
teristic of his petty dishonesty, but still more of the atten- 
tion which he paid to the surface of his life, and the care 
which he expended in preparing it for the public view. 

Toward the close of Pope’s life his personal interests 
formed more and more the chief motive of his poetry. The 
“ Moral Epistles,” though written ostensibly on general 
themes like “ The Use of Riches,” are crowded with par- 
ticular allusions; and the “Imitations of Horace” are 
likewise made up of personal contemporary sketches. 
The “Epistle to Arbuthnot” and the “Epilogue to the 
Satires” are bundles of posthumous spites. The former 
contains Pope’s revenge for Addison’s support of a rival 
translation of Homer, the venomous lines in which Addison 
is described as Atticus. But Pope did not at- his Later 

tack merely the great ones of the earth. His Satire ‘ 

own literary ventures and his alliance with Swift, Gay, and 
others, brought him into collision with critics like John 
Dennis, with Theobald, a rival editor of Shakespeare, with 
Bentley, who as a Greek scholar spoke disrespectfully of 
Pope’s Homer. These and countless other literary and 


210 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


personal grudges Pope paid off by the several publications 
of The Dunciad, an elaborate satire in which, after the 
fashion of Dryden in MacFlecknoe, the dullards, pedants, 
and bad poets are presented in ridiculous surroundings and 
attitudes. All this morbid following of “ miserable aims 
that end in self " seems remote enough from the dignity of 
a great poet. Yet it must not be forgotten that the age 
itself was largely preoccupied with small things. Pope's 
satiric genius came to him as of right, at a time when the 
eyes of men were turned away from the wonders of nature 
and of the human heart, and were fixed on themselves and 
their worldly concerns. 

One of Pope's last friendships, that with Bolingbroke, 
proved the inspiration of the best remembered of his poems, 
the Essay on Man. Bolingbroke was the representative 
of a kind of scepticism, thoroughly characteristic of eigh- 
teenth century thought, to which the name Deism has been 
given. Deism was an effort to substitute natural religion 
The “Essay for Christianity. Indeed Pope's “ Essay" is in 
on Man.” g0 f ar an ti-Christian, that it finds satisfactory 
grounds for belief in God by the exercise of reason, unaid- 
ed by revelation. The poem is in reality an application of 
common-sense to the problems of the universe and to the 
life of man ; and where common-sense refuses to carry us, 
“ beyond the flaming ramparts of the world," there Pope 
limits his inquiry. The first epistle is concerned with 
man's place in nature ; the second with individual ethics ; 
the third with the origin of society and politics ; the fourth 
with the question of man's happiness. In all four appear 
the positivism of the century, its shallow satisfaction with 
things as they are, its dislike of those speculative differ- 
ences which lead to fanaticism, its trust in downright 
utility. In short, the Essay on Man is a marvellous col- 
lection of aphorisms, pointing neatly and exactly the 
peculiarities and prejudices of the age of which Pope was 
so eminently the voice. 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


211 


Pope was by personal inclination connected chiefly with 
the writers who gathered about Swift, and in Swift’s ab- 
sence in Ireland he was the centre of the group. His sat- 
ellite of chief magnitude was John Gay (1685-1732). Gay, 
unlike his greater friends, was a thoroughly good-natured, 
likable man, whose bent was toward broad, genial humor 
rather than bitter satire. His earliest important poem. The 
Shepherd’s Week (1714), was a burlesque treatment of the 
conventions of pastoral poetry. In Trivia (1715) he trans- 
ferred his talent for humorous observation to the London 
streets, and this and the Fables (1727) show his 
happy faculty for easy comment and criticism J ° hn Gay ‘ 
of life. His fame in his own day rested perhaps chiefly 
upon The Beggar’s Opera (1 728), another burlesque of the 
pastoral form ; but he is remembered now for a lyrical gift, 
which produced the two famous songs, “’Twaswhen the 
seas were roaring,” and “ Black-eyed Susan.” 

Pope brought the heroic couplet to perfection, and per- 
haps for that reason the younger poets, who grew up in the 
second quarter of the century turned their attention to other 
forms. Again, Pope’s neglect of nature and human passion 
may have been a cause why men of originality should have 
entered upon these fields of poetic material. But it must be 
said further that before the death of Pope the mood of the 
nation was undergoing a change. The' civilizing, critical 
spirit had done its work ; and the age was ready for a freer, 
more emotional expression. Its interests were broadened. 
Tired of contemplating man in the narrow sphere marked 
out by artificial society, and invested with the conven- 
tional attributes of town life, poets looked beyond, and saw 
humanity as it appeared in the country, or in The New 

remote parts of the world. They learned to Poetry, 

look toward the past with reverence, and with a desire to 
know it more thoroughly. Nature was noted as the 
environment of the larger part of humanity, and was then 
described for its own sake. Indeed, the new attitude y 


212 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


toward nature, and the new feeling for the past, became 
the leading signs of the romantic movement, of which the 
pioneers were Thomson, Young, Collins, and Gray (see 
page 257). It must not be thought, however, that the new 
school gained at once and unopposed a position of author- 
ity. On the contrary, it made its way slowly, against a 
vigorous reaction led by Samuel Johnson. In the third 
quarter of the century, Johnson succeeded to that primacy 
in English literature which had earlier belonged to Dryden 
and to Pope ; but it is significant of the inroads which the 
romantic revival was making into the received traditions of 
eighteenth century criticism, that, though Johnson was of 
a more absolute temper than either of his predecessors, 
his sway was never so complete as theirs. 

Johnson’s life is typical of the social conditions under 
which literature was practised in the second period of the 
century. By his time literature had lost its political sup- 
port, and was obliged to rely entirely upon the public. 
And the reading public was of slow growth. The writers 
who depended upon it were compelled to live in a squalid 
bohemia, — not unlike that inhabited by the popular group 
of authors in the age of Elizabeth, — and to put forth a 
mass of bad poetry, criticism, and journalism merely for 
The social bread. The name of the street where many oi 
Position of them lived. Grub Street, became a synonym for 
hack writing and poverty. The aristocratic tra- 
ditions of the profession were supported by men of the high- 
est reputation, like Pope, who could approach the public 
directly through the subscription list ; but for the ordinary 
writer there was no resource except servitude to the literary 
broker or bookseller. Under these hard conditions Johnson 
and his friends slowly made their way to distinction ; from 
that Grub Street which Pope and Swift had scornfully 
lampooned, came their successors in power and reputa- 
tion. 

Samuel Johnson was born in 1709, the son of a Litclu 


TIIE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


213 


field bookseller. He was at Oxford for a time, but bis 
father's failure obliged him to leave the University, and 
after vainly trying to win his bread as a teacher, Samuel 
he tramped to London. Here he lived in a Johnson, 
state of wretchedness which is reflected in his Life of Sav- 
age, a poet who was his companion in Grub Street misery. 
Often the friends walked the streets from dusk to dawn 
for want of mere shelter. One resource was, indeed, open 
to them. Following the success of The Tatler and The 
Spectator, had come the periodical magazine of miscel- 
laneous literature, of which the Gentleman’s Magazine 
(1731) and the London Magazine were the first. For some 
years J ohnson wrote for the Gentleman’s Magazine reports 
of the debates in Parliament. His first poem, “ London " 
(1738), gave him some reputation, which was increased by 
“ The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749), and by his drama 
Irene, a stiff classical tragedy, which was staged by the 
good-nature of his friend and former pupil David Garrick. 
He wrote also essays after The Spectator model, called The 
Rambler (1750-1752). But his pre-eminent position came 
to him after the publication of his Dictionary of the English 
Language, in 1755. When he had announced this work 
seven years before, Johnson had sought the support and 
patronage of Lord Chesterfield, but the latter had been 
contemptuously cold toward the project. When the 
work was about to appear, however, the nobleman let it be 
known that he would accept and reward the His Later 

dedication of the work to himself ; but it was Life * 
Johnson's turn, and in his famous letter to Chesterfield he 
wrote for English literature its final declaration of inde- 
pendence from the institution of patronage. 

The Dictionary made Johnson's fame and state secure. 
In 1764 he formed with Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, and 
others, the famous Literary Club, as chief member of which 
lie held the unquestioned headship of contemporary letters 
in England. Still, Johnson was poor ; and to the end of 


214 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


his life he was forced to labor to support himself and the 
various persons who fell dependent upon him. When his 
mother died, in 1759, he wrote his oriental apologue, Rasse - 
las, in a week, to pay for the funeral. He wrote other 
series of essays. The Adventurer , and The Idler. He edited 
Shakespeare. He undertook the preparation of a series of 
lives of the English poets, which appeared between 1779 
and 1781. He died in 1784. 

Both in his original writing and in his criticism upon 
the writings of others, Johnson emphasizes the classical 
dependence upon accepted models and attained results, as 
opposed to romantic experiment and aspiration. In his 
Johnson’s poetry he followed Pope's use of the heroic 
Classicism, couplet. Like Pope, also, he modelled his poems 
on the works of Latin writers ; his “ London/' for ex- 
ample, being a general attack upon the evils of society, in 
close imitation of Juvenal. His sympathy with classical 
ideals led him to conform his play, Irene, to the unities. 
In his prose, he continued the work of Dryden and Addi- 
son. His two most important prose works, his Introduction 
to Shakespeare and his Lives of the Poets, illustrate the 
point of view in matters of art which Dryden had confirmed 
and established ; and his essays, published under the titles 
of The Rambler and The Idler, are modelled upon the form 
set by The Tatler, though Johnson's essays are longer, 
heavier, and duller than Addison's. His moral tone, too, 
is more serious ; for he looked at morality from the 
point of view of character, rather than from that of civili- 
zation. His essays on the Necessity of Punctuality, on 
Idleness, on The Luxury of a Vain Imagination, are 
serious, though somewhat commonplace studies in the con- 
duct of life. Indeed, the seriousness of Johnson's moral 
tone is everywhere pronounced ; and in this respect, too, 
he is a genuine representative of the classic era, in its 
worthier aspects. His “Vanity of Human Wishes" is 
written in a lofty strain of moral elevation. He accepted 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


215 


without question the classical fiction that works of art 
should somehow do good to people ; even his Lives of the 
Poets he hopes are “ written in such a manner as may tend 
to the promotion of piety.” 

But although, in these particulars, Johnson illustrates 
the formally accepted point of view of the classical age, 
there are many signs in him of an individual re- His Reaction 
action against it. It is true, he was a classicist s£u n Tradi S " 
in his fondness for the admitted, the regular, tion * 
and in his dislike of the unusual ; in his insistence upon 
the universal in taste, as opposed to the individual. But 
at the same time his sensible, reality-loving habit of mind 
led him to hit a sham when he saw it, even such a venerable 
and reverenced sham as the unities of dramatic action. 
In spite of his own conformity to classical requirement in 
Irene, he boldly points out, in his criticism of Shakespeare, 
that the acceptance of any theatrical production as real, 
involves such concessions from the imagination of the au- 
dience that it is not in common-sense to refuse license in 
minor matters. His attitude on this and other points 
serves to illustrate the reason of the eighteenth century at 
war with the principles of art which had been long as- 
sumed to be the highest expression of that reason. His 
position in the world of letters strikingly illustrates the 
approaching end of the era which had begun with the Res- 
toration. His real sense of the values of things, and his 
freedom from cant, tended to shake his faith in pseudo- 
classical formulae ; and his personal force, his independence 
of character, his very prejudices, made broadly in the di- 
rection of individualism as against authority in criticism, 
and thus prepared the way for the romantic reaction. 

The Rambler essays show, perhaps more saliently 
than any other of Johnson's writings, those 
peculiarities which have made his style a by- HlsSt y le - 
word for heaviness. The diction involves a large propor- 
tion of Latin words, due, as has been humorously sug- 


216 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


gested, to the fact that Johnson was then at work on 
his lexicon, and used his Rambler as a track where he 
could exercise the words that had grown stiff from long 
disuse. Moreover Johnson doubles epithets, adds illustra- 
tions, develops, expands, modifies, balances, repeats, and 
exhausts the idea before he will have done with it. His 
sentences are thus complicated and weighty, full of inver- 
sions, depending much on rhetorical artifices such as an- 
tithesis and climax. But this elaborate manner is not 
always out of place. It occasionally gives to Johnson's 
writing a sombre and splendid eloquence, as in the open- 
ing passage of Rasselas. Moreover, he could be simple and 
colloquial when he chose ; and his later works, possibly 
because they were written more hurriedly, are much more 
terse and rapid. In general, Johnson's influence on English 
style was a good one. While he confirmed the tradition 
of order, correctness, and lucidity, which had begun with 
Dryden, he introduced a greater variety of effect, a more 
complex sentence structure, and a more copious diction. 
He showed how, even within the rules of composition 
defined in practice by Dryden and Addison, the richness 
and variety of Elizabethan prose might be attempted. 

Johnson had in him a force of character far greater 
than he succeeded in bringing to bear on any of his lit- 
erary undertakings. This force of character 

Boswell’s J . r . 

“Life of strongly impressed his contemporaries, and has 
been transmitted to later times by the extraor- 
dinary zeal and ability of the greatest of all biographers, 
James Boswell, whose Life of Johnson is one of the classics 
of the century. It begins properly with the year 1763, 
when its author first met Johnson. From that meeting 
Boswell followed the great man's doings and sayings with 
unwearied attention. In his effort to draw Johnson out 
and to make him expressive, he was deterred by no rebuffs, 
and he was not ashamed to offer himself as the butt of his 
master's wit. For twenty years he worked with his eye 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


217 


constantly upon his subject, and was then prepared, with 
the same cheerful sacrifice of his own dignity, to write the 
biography which still keeps Johnson in the place which 
he won, that of the most salient figure of his epoch. 
Of no man in the past is our perception so extraor- 
dinarily keen and first-hand. His bulky, awkward appear- 
ance, his brusque, overbearing manner, his portentous 
voice, his uncouth gestures and attitudes, his habits of 
whistling or “ clucking like a hen ” in the intervals of 
speaking, and of “ blowing out his breath like a whale ” 
when he had finished, — all these have come down to us, 
together with the record of a great mass of his conversa- 
tion. It is in this last that Johnson’s power and Boswell’s 
skill are most strikingly manifested. Johnson wrote much, 
but nearly always under the spur of necessity ; he talked 
spontaneously. His reputation, indeed, rests largely upon 
such sayings as “ Being in a ship is like being in gaol 
with the chance of drowning,” or “ A woman’s preaching 
is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done 
well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” In such 
scraps of homely comment the practical sense of the age 
expressed itself as vividly and rememberably as in Pope’s 
couplets. 

To Boswell’s “ Life,” then, Johnson owes his latter-day 
reputation as an eccentric, and as a sayer of good things. 
But there is another Johnson whom Boswell knew without 
comprehending, — the stricken, hopeless, much-enduring, 
brave, pious soul, who exemplifies so much of what is 
wholly admirable in human nature. For Johnson suffered 
grievously in life ; and as he grew older his philosophy came 
to be a serious and considered pessimism. In Rasselas he 
deals honestly with the question of human happiness ; and 
he finds that life is almost barren of joy, that escape from 
pain is the highest felicity. He made no attempt to blink 
the facts of existence ; h© had no imaginative coloring to 
give them ; and yet he faced life always with energy and 


218 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Oliver 

Goldsmith. 


courage. In spite of everything, in spite even of weakness 
in his own character, he believed in himself. In his stren- 
uousness, his morality, his refusal to yield ground any- 
where to the evils without or the foes within, in his resolve 
to draw inspiration from his own shortcomings, in all this 
Jphnson is a great man, and for this he deserves his fame. 

V Johnson's so-called dictatorship of English letters was 
largely the result of his conversational supremacy in the 
Literary Club, which included nearly all the famous writ- 
ers of the time. Next to Johnson himself its most notable 
figure was Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith was born 
in 1728 in Ireland, where his father had a small 
living. He was a dull boy at school, and had an undistin- 
guished career at the University of Dublin. He then went 
to Edinburgh to study medicine, and afterward to Leyden ; 
whence he begged his way over a large part of Europe, re- 
turning to London in 1756. After an unsuccessful attempt 
as a school-master, he took to literature as it was practised 
in Grub Street, and became a hack writer for various mag- 
azines. His papers called The Citizen of the World (1760- 
1761) (which he wrote for the “ Public Ledger") consisted 
of observations upon English life written from the point 
of view of a Chinaman. In 1764 Johnson found him one 
day in his lodgings, the prisoner of his unpaid landlady, 
with the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield by him/ 
Johnson sold the book, which appeared some fifteen months 
later, after Goldsmith had published his first successful 
poem, The Traveller. His second venture into poetry. The 
Deserted Village , appeared in 1770. Meanwhile Goldsmith 
had turned to the stage, producing The Good-natured Man 
in 1768, and She Stoops to Conquer in 1773, the year before 
his death. 

Goldsmith is almost as well known to us as Johnson, and 
largely through the same agency, the industry of Boswell. 
He is portrayed in the Life of Johnson as the second lumi- 
nary of the club, the only member who dared persistently 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


219 


to provoke the wrath of the dictator. Again and again 
Boswell shows us Johnson and Goldsmith, the heavily 
armed soldier and the deft slinger. Occasionally Johnson 
bore down his opponent by sheer weight, but more often 
Goldsmith sent his stone to its mark and made good his 
retreat. Sometimes his success turned on a mere trick ; 
but often his replies were compact of sense and salt, as 
when he doubted Johnson’s ability to write a fable because 
he would inevitably make the little fishes talk like whales. 
Goldsmith’s wariness in conversation did not accompany 
him into the more practical walks of life. He was invari- 
ably in difficulties, pecuniary or social ; partly through his 
generosity, in which he resembled his own Good-natured 
Man, partly through his blind trust in the Goldsmith’s 
world. For Goldsmith was, in one sense at Character * 
least, the antithesis of Swift. He gave himself freely ; he 
threw himself upon life with the naive imprudence of a 
child. Whether traversing Europe as a penniless student, 
or selling his master-pieces. Goldsmith took no thought 
for the morrow. And with this confidence in his fellows 
went a great love for them, a love apparent in all the 
writings into which he put his real self. His papers in 
The Citizen of the World, though, like Addison’s, often 
directed against the faults and absurdities of men, have 
a tenderness which goes beyond Addison’s mildness, a 
note of kinship that is very different from the Spectator’s 
aloofness. Goldsmith’s poems are written in the metre of 
Pope, but in spirit they are far removed from Pope’s satir- 
ical hardness. In place of the savage sketches of Atticus 
and Bufo in The Epistle to Arbuthnot, we have the 
village parson in The Deserted Village . And it is to be 
noted that, though Goldsmith had no personal sympathy 
with the rising romantic school, his interest in remote, 
obscure, and unfortunate phases of human life, which ap- 
pears in The Traveller , his championship of the indi- 
vidual against the institution which would crush him, in 


220 A HISTORY OF fclHGLISH LITERATURE 

The Deserted Village, mark him as a precursor of the 
romantic movement. 

A criticism that has often been made on Goldsmith's 
Deserted Village, is that the picture of Auburn in its 
prosperity could never apply to an Irish hamlet. The 
same criticism might be applied more broadly to all his 
work. To him realism was impossible, because in his 
whole experience of life he invariably read the world in 
terms of his own idealism. This idealism gives its color- 
“ she stoops ing to his novel, and also to his comedies. She 
to Conquer. Stoops to Conquer, the best known of them, 
presents us, soon after the opening of the play, with a 
riotous scene at the “ Three Pigeons,” led by the loutish 
squire, Tony Lumpkin. Two travellers appear, whom 
Tony directs to the house of his step-father, Mr. Hard- 
castle, as to an inn. The travellers are young Marlow, 
whom Hardcastle is expecting as the suitor for his 
daughter, and his friend Hastings. Hardcastle recognizes 
them ; but Marlow, and Hastings also for a time, believe 
themselves to be in a hostelry, think Hardcastle is the host 
and his daughter the servant, and behave accordingly. 
The situation, however, favors the love affair between 
Miss Hardcastle and Marlow ; for the latter, who has 
never been able to conquer his bashfulness with ladies 
of condition, finds his path easy with the supposed bar- 
maid. 

The play is a charming idyl, in which the rough edges of 
the world are ground smooth, in which faults turn out to be 
virtues, and mistakes to be blessings. At times the stage- 
land copies the actual world with fidelity, as in the scene at 
the “ Three Pigeons,” and in the simple country life in 
Hardcastle's home. Tony Lumpkin is a genuine child of 
the soil. But the magic of comedy is over all, a magic in- 
deed much subdued from the brilliant romanticism of 
Shakespeare's day, but still potent. For the sober theatre 
of the late eighteenth century, She Stoops to Conquer is a 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 221 

kind of prose Tempest , the most victorious assertion in its 
age, of the mood of the idyl. 

Goldsmith’s plays are a reflection of the idealism which 
was beginning to manifest itself in the realistic age. 
Opposed to him is Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Richard Brins . 
(1751-1816), whose dramas are written in the ley Sheridan, 
mood of satirical observation of the surface of life, which 
the eighteenth century novel expressed, from Fielding to 
Miss Burney. Sheridan was born at Dublin, of English- 
Irish stock. After a romantic ^runaway marriage he set- 
tled in London ; and when only twenty-three he produced 
The Rivals (1775). In 1777, after his assumption of the 
directorship of Drury Lane Theatre, he put on his best 
play. The School for Scandal , and in 1779 The Critic. 

In The Rivals we have the immortal Mrs. Malaprop ; her 
niece, Lydia Languish, the romantic heroine ; and Lydia’s 
lovers. Bob Acres, Sir Lucius O’Trigger, and Captain Ab- 
solute, the last masquerading under the name Beverley. 
Absolute thinks at first that he is loving in .< TheRivals> „ 
opposition to his father’s will, and when he 
finds that Lydia is the very bride picked out for him, he 
continues to maintain with her his character of Beverley, 
as an appeal to her romantic spirit. The plot involves 
some absurdities, but it is fertile in amusing situations, 
and the play abounds in clever dialogue. 

Hie School for Scandal opens in the eighteenth century 
world of fashion, which, in its frivolous artificiality, lent 
itself readily to the purposes of the comedian. “The school 
In this corrupt society Lady Teazle has, for forScandal - 
form’s sake, provided herself with a lover, Joseph Surface. 
Meanwhile Joseph, a cold-hearted hypocrite, has plans of 
his own ; one of which is to marry Sir Peter Teazle’s niece 
Maria, and another to supplant his own brother Charles, a 
good-natured spendthrift, in their uncle’s affection. The 
uncle, Sir Oliver, returns from India, introduces himself, 
as a money-lender, to Charles, whom he finds ready to sell 


2 22 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


even his family portraits, except that of Sir Oliver himself. 
This modest bit of loyalty serves to reinstate the prodigal 
in his uncle’s good opinion ; while Joseph, discovered on all 
sides, fades out of the play in disgrace. 

It is evident that here we have an amusing mock world, 
where the principles, moral and social, on which human 
life is actually conducted, are subordinated to the necessi- 
ties of an intrigue. The characters bear an amazing simili- 
tude to real people ; indeed, many of them have long been 
accepted as exact delineations of certain qualities and types ; 
but we never forget while we are with them that we are 
in stage-land. At first sight. The School for Scandal, with 
its opening scenes in which gossip runs wild, seems to re- 
vive the world of the Restoration drama, but there is a 
difference. Light, trifling, frivolous as is Sheridan’s 
society, it is not fundamentally and flagrantly immoral. 
His people play with fire, but they are not burned. So 
much had the moral and social force of the century ac- 
complished, in the years since Collier’s attack on the stage. 

It may have been owing to the development of the 
magazine that the work of the men of Johnson’s period 
was in general of so miscellaneous a character. From this 
charge, however, must be excepted Edward Gibbon (1737- 
1794), who is known for a single work, perhaps the most 
splendid literary achievement of the century. From his 
youth Gibbon believed in his destiny as a historian ; and 
like Milton, he sought long for a subject worthy of his 
Edward powers. At last, while on a visit to Rome in 

Gibbon. 1764, the idea of writing a history of the de- 

cline and fall of the empire came to his mind. Four years 
later he began to work at this subject. In 1776 his first 
volume appeared, but it was not until after eleven years 
more of steady toil that the full six volumes were completed. 

Gibbon is personally well known to us through his frank 
account of himself in his memoirs — a man with little 
dignity, or presence, or passion, or heroism. Yet in the 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


223 


light of his achievement, his life stands out in almost 
heroic proportions. To his great task everything in his 
career was subsidiary. He served for a time in Hig Life and 
the militia, and he remarks that the captain of Work * 
the Hampshire Grenadiers was not useless to the historian 
of the Roman Empire. In like manner*, he made his seat 
in Parliament merely a preparation for his work, “a 
school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue 
of an historian.” It is this sureness of inspiration, this 
unity of accomplishment in Gibbon’s life, that constitute 
his claim to something more than the glory that belongs 
to literary success. In the light of his task his negative 
qualities become positive ; his vices, virtues. As an ad- 
aptation of means to end, Gibbon’s life was a splendid 
performance. 

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire treats the 
history of Rome from the second century to the end of the 
fifth, and then, with a more rapid method, follows the 
Eastern or Byzantine Empire until the fall of Con- 
stantinople. Of Gibbon’s scholarship there can be no 
complaint. He was completely master of his authorities ; 
and his treatment of them is so discriminating, so fair, so 
thorough, that he cannot be superseded. Two HisMeritsand 
serious faults in his work must be laid at the Defects - 
door of his century — his lack of philosophic insight, and 
his lack of sympathy with spiritual movements. Like his 
contemporaries, he distrusted philosophy, and disliked 
enthusiasm. Behind the facts, he did not care to pene- 
trate ; in the realm of emotion he was uncomprehending. 
Hence his dry, hard, inadequate treatment of Christianity ; 
a treatment reflecting his own attitude and limitations. 
He had no spiritual interests ; his point of view was con- 
sistently worldly. 

Gibbon’s style is of the elaborate type introduced by J ohn- 
son. It is massive, solid, and exhaustive. It substitutes 
courtliness for ease, elegance for charm. Its excessive 


224 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


polish gives an effect of insincerity, at times almost of 
mockery. But, in the large, the effect of Gibbon's style is 
commensurate with the greatness of his theme, 
ms style. rhythmic, unwearied march of the sen- 

tences, the flashing of antithesis, and the steady roll of the 
diction, are but pomp and circumstance befitting the stately 
procession of emperors and nations. Chief among Gibbon's 
literary qualities is his sense of structure, which shows 
itself in his faculty for handling large masses of material. 
He consciously composed by paragraphs, each one a unit, 
and each of just the right weight. “It has always been 
my practice," he wrote, “to cast a long paragraph in a 
single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my 
memory, but to suspend the action of my pen till I had 
given the last polish to my work." This sense of exact 
structure, of outline, of organic development, shows itself 
still more in the astonishing architectural merit of the 
whole work. The ruin of the Roman Empire is in polit- 
ical history what the fall of man is in theology, and Gib- 
bon, like Milton, has realized the epic possibilities of his 
theme. 

If Gibbon is a monumental example of a small personal- 
ity becoming by training and economy fit for the greatest 
achievement, a corresponding case of a great man expend- 
ing his powers with apparent fruitlessness, because ex- 
pending them on passing affairs, is found in the career of 
Edmund Burke (1729-1797). Goldsmith's epigram — 

“Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind, ’ * 

expressed the opinion of contemporaries as to Burke's 
career. Yet so penetrating was Burke's thought, and so 
noble its presentation, that his results are of value to-day, 
irrespective of the occasions which called them forth. 

Burke was a native of Ireland, and a Bachelor of Arts of 
Trinity College. He went to London as a student of law, 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


225 


but soon turned aside into literature. His first works 
were an ironical reply to Bolingbroke, called “A Vindica- 
tion of Natural Society/' and an “ Inquiry into Edmund 
the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Burke. 
Beautiful ” (1756). In 1761 he entered politics as secre- 
tary of the Lord Deputy of Ireland ; and later he became 
secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, and member of 
Parliament. Although he never held high office, he was 
for years the brain of the Whig Party in its effort to limit 
the exercise of the royal prerogative, which George III., 
with the assistance of the Tory party, was determined to ex- 
tend. This was indeed the old question which went back 
to the time of the Plantagenets ; but there were involved 
in it new problems, arising from the growth of England 
as a colonial power both in America and in India. It 
is Burke's peculiar distinction that he saw the dangers 
gathering over England from all quarters, and H . g on 
strove to avert them. He pointed out the one America and 
way of escape in the American situation. His 
speech on American taxation was delivered in 1774; his 
great speech on Conciliation with America in 1775. When 
England emerged from the war against the coalition of 
European powers, with the loss indeed of America, but with 
victory in other quarters, Burke instantly began to press 
his inquiry into the circumstances of that triumph. The 
chief success of England had been in India, and the man 
who had won it was Warren Hastings. Against him Burke 
levelled his attack. Instead of thanking God that things 
had turned out so well, he asked why they had turned out 
well, on what principles the Indian Empire had been 
conquered and administered, and whether those principles 
were founded upon justice and humanity. In 1785 he 
delivered his great arraignment of English methods in 
India, in his speech on “The Nabob of Arcot's Debts;" 
and the following year he moved the impeachment of 
Warren Hastings. Two years later he opened the case 


226 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


before the House of Lords, and lie continued to manage it 
until the acquittal of Hastings in 1795. 

Finally, when the dangers which Burke had appre- 
hended from the internal state of England were realized 
in France, he threw himself toward the only safety which 
he could see, and led the opposition to the French Revolu- 
tion. This attitude involved a separation from his party, 
but Burke took the step without flinching. 

His Views on . A . 0 

the French His “Reflections on the krench Revolution, 
Revolution. p U ] 3 }j g ] ie( j [ n 1790 ^ did much to check the 

rising sympathy with the movement, in England and on 
the continent. He followed this up with “ Thoughts on 
French Affairs ” (1791), “ Appeal from the Hew to the 
Old Whigs ” (1792), and “Letters on a Regicide Peace ” 
(1796-1797). In this opposition Burke took a larger point 
of view than that of mere insular prejudice. He believed 
that England had a world mission, in stemming the tide of 
revolution, and in marshalling the forces of reaction in 
Europe. Right or wrong, the struggle of England against 
France between 1794 and 1815 is a splendid act in the 
drama of nations. It is scarcely too much to say that the 
leading role which England played in those years w r as cast 
for her by Burke. He wrote the lines which the cannon 
declaimed at Trafalgar and Waterloo. 

There are thus three periods in Burke's career, in which 
his writings concerned successively America, India, and 
France : a first period of Cassandra-prophecy, of unheeded 
warnings, and despised advice ; a second of vigorous pur- 
suit of evil, and vindication of justice ; a third of desperate 
defence of the things he believed in, against the revolution. 
In his first task he was almost utterly unsuccessful ; in the 
second he won a qualified success amid apparent failure ; in 
the third he was immensely victorious. In the first two, 
Burke was distinctly ahead of his age ; in the last he was 
behind it. Nevertheless Burke's reactionary tendencies 
were the result of his character, and rested on the same 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


227 


practical philosophy that guided his thought in other 
matters. 

For Burke was in character essentially moderate, con- 
servative, and practical. His disposition was always to 
work with the materials which existed. He was opposed 
to doctrinaire theories, and to schemes of doubtful applica- 
bility. The French Revolution was, in one way, a mani- 
festation of the rationalism of the eighteenth century ; of the 
tendency to try all things in society by reason alone, and to 
work out by experiments in government the theories which 
had been expounded by speculative philosophers. The 
Revolution was conceived in the spirit of Voltaire’s belief 
that “ they are the most pestilent of all enemies of man- 
kind who discrown sovereign reason to be the serving 
drudge of superstition and social usage.” To His Pol iti C ai 
Burke, on the contrary, reason was by no means Thought ‘ 
an adequate measure of humanity. He took account of 
other elements, even of prejudice, the foe of reason. 
“ Through just prejudice,” he says, “a man’s duty be- 
comes part of his nature.” He held that social usage, 
that superstition even, might be a part of the wisdom of 
the ages. And for that wisdom, expressed in concrete 
form as institutions, the embodied result of long experi- 
ence, Burke had immense reverence. He held that if in- 
stitutions were to change, it must not be by the mere 
arbitrary promulgation of law. On the contrary he says : 
“If a great change is to he made in human affairs the 
minds of men will be fitted to it, the general opinions and 
feelings will draw that way, every fear, every hope will 
forward it.” 

This reliance on the ultimate facts of human character, 
even its prejudices and weaknesses, this trust in life rather 
than in reason, marks a certain connection between Burke 
and the romantic school in literature. Still more is this 
connection emphasized by the imaginative power of Burke’s 
sympathy ; a sympathy which penetrated to the uttermost 


228 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


parts of the earth, making the wrongs of the American 
colonists and the sufferings of the Hindus as real to him as 
the conditions under which he himself lived. Another 
point of contact between Burke and the romanticists is his 
power of investing with interest and color the 
tion with the past experience of the race, and of making it 
Romanticists. a pp ea j to ^h e imagination. In short, Burke, 

like Scott and Wordsworth, was a romanticist in feeling, 
though often reactionary in faith. 

It is the feeling behind his thought that gives to Burke's 
style its curious, far-reaching eloquence. His substance is 
solid, massive, full of fact, apparently most refractory and 
inert ; yet it is constantly brought to a white heat by the 
flame of his passion. No such style as his had been seen 
in England. He formed it indeed on the model 
of Bolingbroke, but he has a range of effects to 
which his master was a stranger, — splendid imagery, irony, 
fervor, conviction ; while in such technical matters as the 
articulation of his sentences, and the direction of his para- 
graphs, Burke measured for the first time the rhetorical 
possibilities of English writing. 

With Burke the eighteenth century properly ends. He 
is the last of the group of great writers whose chief inter- 
est was in politics, and whose trust was in institutions. He 
died while defending, with apparent success, the work of 
the century against what seemed to him the forces of de- 
struction. But although he uttered the formal doctrine of 
the eighteenth century, in his deeper thought he repre- 
sents that spiritual gain with which humanity' advanced 
into the nineteenth. 


His Style. 


/ 


CHAPTER XI 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE NOVEL 

As the drama was the characteristic and natural liter- 
ary expression of the Elizabethan age, so the novel has 
been the prevailing type of popular literature in the last 
two centuries. For this change there have been assigned 
various reasons. In the first place, it is clear that the 
dramatist works within limitations. He must put his 
material before the public in a few hours and „ , 

on a small stage. He must make his person- the Drama, 
ages tell their story, and reveal their characters, without 
appearing in his own person. The novelist, on the con- 
trary, is practically unlimited in time, space, or method. 
He can assume omniscience in the conduct of his story, 
revealing his characters by selections from their acts, 
speeches, and thoughts ; even from the life which lies be- 
neath their conscious thought. And above all, he can give 
his attitude toward life in his own authoritative interpreta- 
tion of the meaning of the events which he narrates. Nat- 
urally, therefore, the novel lends itself more easily to the 
treatment of the great mass of interests and problems which 
make up modern life. Moreover, it is to be noted that the 
drama depends, to some extent at least, on the theatre. 
The English reading public in these latter days has become 
so extensive and so scattered, that it has far outgrown 
the possibility of being served by such an institution as 
the theatre of Shakespeare’s time, or even, let us say, as the 
French stage of to-day. Thus to the general causes for the 
predominance of the novel in the modern world, must be 
added this physical reason, which applies with peculiar 
force to English literature. 


229 


230 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


To give a complete account of the modern novel we must 
go back to the stories of the Middle Ages. These were in 
general of two kinds, adapted to two audiences, the nobles 
and the people. Of the first class were the romances 
clustering about such heroes as Charlemagne and King 
Mediaeval Arthur, and dealing with knightly adventure, 
Fiction. mystical religious experience, and courtly love. 
These were told first in verse, later in prose. The Morte 
d’ Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory (1470) is the most compre- 
hensive example of the knightly epic in England. Being 
written for people of leisure and culture, the romances of 
chivalry presented a highly imaginative, idealized view of 
life, in which strength, virtue, and passion were all of a 
transcendent and unnatural character. The fiction of the 
common people was decidedly more realistic. For them, 
the stories of the knightly epics were in part retold, often 
with the purpose of exhibiting in a cynical spirit the coarse 
human motives underlying chivalric achievement. Some- 
times the vices and follies of men were represented in short 
tales, in prose or verse ; the hypocrisy of the clergy, for 
example, was a favorite subject. An idea of the range of 
mediaeval popular fiction can be gained from Chaucer’s 
Canterbury Tales, or from the collection of stories made 
by Boccaccio in the Decameron. These prose stories were 
called in Italy novelle, from which term is derived our 
word novel. The spirit of burlesque aroused by the con- 
trast between the ideals of chivalry and the affairs of actual 
life, led in Spain to the production of a form of story known 
as the picaresque romance. Here the hero is a rascal 
(picaro=rogi\e) who wanders from place to place, finding 
all manner of adventures, amusing and scandalous ; he is not, 
like the knight-errant, bent upon finding the Holy Grail or 
upon rescuing injured princesses, but is intent merely upon 
satisfying his bodily wants. The typical Italian novella and 
the Spanish rogue story resembled each other in their real- 
ism, in the faithfulness with which they reproduced the 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


231 


manners of actual life. They are the source of the realis- 
tic novel of to-day, while what we call the romance looks 
back rather to the epic of chivalry for its beginning. 

English fiction of the Renaissance was largely derived 
from the sources just mentioned. There were great num- 
bers of translations of the Italian novelle and 
some translations of the Spanish rogue stories. Snor the’ 
There were prose romances founded on the Renaissance * 
careers of popular heroes, and told sometimes in the ideal- 
istic, often in the popular spirit. The first great land- 
marks in English fiction of the Renaissance were Lyly's 
Euphues, an example of a fictitious narrative with a pur- 
pose, and Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia , in which a romance 
of chivalry is given a pastoral setting. In the light of 
Lyly's and Sidney's success, many stories, often from Ital- 
ian sources, were retold in the Euphuistic manner, or with 
the addition of Arcadian elements ; of these Robert Greene's 
Menaphon , and Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde have already 
been mentioned. An excellent example of an original 
rogue story is Thomas Nash's Unfortunate Traveller. 

In the seventeenth century the English readers of fiction 
were chiefly supplied from France, where there had arisen 
a school of writers who told at great length, and English Fic _ 
with much sentimental and imaginative embroi- £ on “the 
dery, the stories of the Grand Cyrus and other century, 
half-historical heroes. Of these tales the best known are 
those by Mile. Scudery. In their exaggeration of heroism 
and in their artificiality they resembled the romances of 
chivalry which they succeeded, and like them they appealed 
especially to the aristocracy, both in France and in Eng- 
land. Among the people, the chief interest in the seven- 
teenth century was the religious one ; naturally, therefore, 
we find popular fiction of the period represented by the 
adaptation of the common type of story to the religious 
life. Bunyan's Pilgrim wanders through the world like 
the knight-errant or the Spanish rogue, meeting advent- 


232 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ures. Like the knight he has a high purpose ; like the 
rogue he mingles with people of every sort, and reflects in 
his journey the common sights and interests of English 
country life. Almost as notable a contribution to the de- 
velopment of modern fiction as The Pilgrim’s Progress , is 
Bunyan's autobiography, Grace Abounding. One of the 
chief elements of the novel is the study of character, and 
in this study the novelist has often found his most genu- 
ine material in the literature of confessions ; among such 
examples of personal analysis and recorded spiritual expe- 
rience, Bunyan’s account is one of the most naively con- 
vincing and powerfully rendered. 

The real beginning of the English novel took place in 
the eighteenth century, with the w ork of Daniel Defoe 
(1661-1731). Defoe, like Banyan, was a Dissenter, a 
thorough man of the people, a stranger to the ideals and 
refinements of aristocratic life. Moreover, in an age when 
the aim of the successful writer was to rise in the world, and 
Daniel S a ^ n aristocratic connections, Defoe seems 

Defoe. to have been entirely willing to remain in his 

class, to serve it, and to write for it. He began life as a 
tradesman, but soon interested himself in politics, and held 
various offices under William III. In the early years of 
Queen Anne's reign he turned the arms of the Tories, who 
were in favor of a mild persecution of Dissenters, against 
themselves, by publishing a pamphlet The Shortest Way 
with Dissenters , in which he ironically advised the sever- 
est punishments for religious nonconformity. With an 
art which he showed later in his novels, he concealed his 
real personality, and his work passed as that of a genuine 
Tory. The trick was discovered, however, and Defoe was 
punished by being placed in the pillory and imprisoned 
for some years. While in prison he edited The Remeiv, 
one of the first English newspapers. He was released to 
enter the service of the government as a secret agent, per- 
haps as a spy, which office he held under different ministries 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 233 

almost to the end of his life. He continued to write for 
newspapers, and as a clever journalist he published the 
lives of various people of interest to the public : of Peter 
the Great for one ; of Jonathan Wild, a notorious crim- 
inal and thief-taker, for another ; of Captain Avery, a 
notable pirate, for a third. His life brought him into 
contact with all sorts of adventurers ; being of a curious 
disposition and a retentive memory, he heard their stories 
and afterward wrote them out. When his material failed 
he drew upon his imagination ; but he realized that he 
was writing for people who demanded fact, who perhaps 
thought it wrong to read fiction, and accordingly he tried 
to give every appearance of reality to his narratives. 

The method by which he worked over from biography 
and history into fiction, is illustrated by The Journal of the 
Plague Year (1722). In this work much of the i<The ournai 
material is authentic, gathered doubtless from of the Plague 1 
many sources ; but while a historian would 
have endeavored to base his account directly upon these 
various authorities, Defoe, as a story teller, presents all 
his facts as the continuous experience of an imaginary 
narrator. So cleverly is this done that the personality of 
this character comes to be the most authoritative thing in 
the book ; we believe in the horrors of the Plague because 
we believe that the imaginary spectator of them is truth- 
ful. In his power thus to produce a perfect illusion of 
reality, Defoe anticipates the later triumphs of great fic- 
tion. Many writers have used pestilence as one of the 
means for awakening terror in their readers ; but Defoe 
has surpassed them, simply because he seems so earnestly 
intent on telling the mere truth, with no care for literary 
effect. 

While working on the border line between biography 
and fiction, Defoe was attracted by the story of a sailor, 
Alexander Selkirk, who had been wrecked on an island in 
the Pacific, and had remained there for many years. This 


234 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


story suggested The Surprising Adventures of Robinson 
Crusoe , which was published in 1719. Here again Defoe 
“Robinson shows what a contemporary described as “the 
crusoeu ’ little art he is so truly master of, of forging a 
story and imposing it on the world for truth; ” and here also 
the reason for his success is apparent. Defoe is always mi- 
nute in his account of events and circumstances, and these 
circumstances, although not always the most important, 
are precisely those which the character who is telling the 
story would be likely to remember. In other words, Defoe 
is a master of the art of taking and keeping the point of 
view of his hero. Indeed, he seems to abdicate his rights 
as an author ; to allow his hero to possess him. He throws 
himself completely into the situation of Crusoe, wrecked 
on the island. He foresees the dangers incident to such a 
situation, takes measures of precaution against them, in- 
dulges the natural hope of escape, and makes the wonder- 
fully human mistake of building a boat too heavy for him 
to launch. He is absorbed in the trivial events of a soli- 
tary existence ; he is filled with satisfaction at his miniature 
conquest of nature, and with horror at the frightful dis- 
covery of the human footprint in the sand. In fact, so ut- 
terly does he merge himself in Crusoe that, when his work 
was finished, he came to see in the struggles of the York 
mariner an allegory of his own toilsome and dangerous 
experience of life. 

Crusoe proved so successful that Defoe followed it the 
next year with the Further Adventures , and then with the 
Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe. In the next few 
years he also published a series of stories of adventure : 
Captain Singleton (1720), a tale of piracy ; Moll Flanders 
The Minor (1722), the life of a thief and adventuress; Colonel 
Novels. Jacque (1722) ; and Roxana (1724). These sto- 
ries are all picaresque in matter and in form. The hero, who 
is the narrator, constitutes the chief element of unity ; the 
other characters appear and pass away, no attempt being 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


235 


made to work them into a plot. Defoe conceals his per- 
sonality behind that of his hero, as he had done in the 
case of Crusoe ; yet his personal attitude toward life ap- 
pears in the purpose which each tale clearly has. Defoe 
was a Dissenter ; he wrote for the descendants of Puritans, 
men in whom the interest in conduct and morality was 
strong. It is true, Puritanism, in its descent to the eigh- 
teenth century, had lost its ideal character. Defoe’s mo- 
rality is that of the bourgeois. He inculcates the utilitarian 
virtues ; his aim is social usefulness. Robinson Crusoe is 
a manual of the qualities that have won the world from 
barbarism, — courage, patience, ingenuity. In the minor 
novels these same practical virtues are exhibited, even in 
the pursuit of evil ends. But beyond this Defoe has a 
moral idea to which he makes most of his char- Defoe’s 
acters conform, by the repentance in which they Morality, 
end their stories. This side of Defoe’s ethics is less sincere 
than the other, and its appearance is rather an artistic 
blemish. In the case of Moll Flanders, who has been a 
great sinner, repentance seems inadequate ; in that of poor 
Crusoe, who has done nothing worse than run away from 
home, it seems forced. Yet in both cases Defoe bears 
witness to a prevailing demand for the moralization of lit- 
erature ; a demand made by the English middle class for 
which he wrote, and of which he so eminently was. 

One element of the modern novel Defoe’s stories are 
without, — they lack plot. Like the Spanish rogue stories, 
they are merely successions of adventures which befall the 
same hero. The first great success in constructing a story 
which should be guided throughout its course by a single 
motive, the love of one person for another, was 

r “ Richard - 

Pamela , written by a London printer, Samuel soius^ ^ 
Richardson (1689-1761). Richardson was asked 
by a publisher to write a series of letters which should 
serve as models for the correspondence of people in the 
lower walks of life. He did so ; and, to add interest to 


236 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


the letters, he wrote them as the connected letters of a 
young serving-girl to her parents, telling the story of her 
temptation by her master, of her resistance, and of her 
final triumph in marrying him. The book appeared in 
1740, and was so popular that Richardson wrote a sequel. 
The success of Pamela encouraged the author to produce 
a second work of fiction, Clarissa Harlowe, which ap- 
“ cianssa peared in eight volumes in 1748. This is the 
Hariowe.” story of a young lady, Clarissa Harlowe, who is 
at the outset the unwilling object of the attentions of a 
certain Lovelace. A quarrel has occurred between him 
and Clarissa’s brother, and to keep Lovelace from re- 
newing the difficulty she continues to communicate with 
him. Her relatives, however, persist in distrusting her, 
and to secure her final separation from Lovelace they in- 
troduce a second suitor, an impossible creature named 
Solmes ; and they resort to such measures of persecution 
to force her to accept him that she finally decides to flee 
to the protection of a friend. Unfortunately she accepts 
the assistance of Lovelace, who virtually kidnaps her. 
After many chapters of suffering she dies, leaving a vast 
heritage of remorse to be divided among her relatives and 
Lovelace. 

Like Pamela, Clarissa is told by means of letters which 
pass between the different characters. Obviously, this 
method is in its nature dramatic ; that is to say, the reader 
holds communication directly with the characters. In 
other ways it is clear that Richardson thought of the novel 
as an elaborated drama. He calls Clarissa Harlowe “a dra- 
matic narrative ; 99 and he does so very properly, for, as in 
a play, there is in Clarissa a definite catastrophe, every 
step toward which is carefully prepared for by something 
Richardson’s ^ the enviionment oi the characters of the 
Method. actors. Richardson could not, however, forego 
entirely the novelist’s right to personal communication 
with his audience. He introduced footnotes in which he 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


23 


cd forced his own view of the story, when he thought his 
readers likely to go astray. These comments were needed 
especially in reference to the two principal persons, whose 
characters show a degree of complexity to which the novel 
readers of that day were scarcely accustomed. In the case 
of Clarissa this complexity seems justified ; in all her un- 
certainties, scruples, hesitations, still more in her humili- 
ation and anguish, she appeals to us as a real woman ; but 
Lovelace, though ingenious and consistent, is a machine. 

This discrepancy is, after all, natural ; for Richardson 
knew women better than men. As a youth he wrote love 
letters for girls. As a mature writer he worked in close 
connection with the female part of his audience. His circle 
of admirers began with his wife, and a young lady who was 
staying at his house while he was composing Pamela. It 
widened with his fame, until it included even great ladies 
of fashion, who in person or by letter communicated with 
the old printer about the progress of his tales. They petted 
him, flattered him, and debauched him with tea ; Richardson’s 
until the good Richardson lost himself in the Character * 
Avalon which they provided, and forgot the world oNiction 
outside. So secluded did he become that at last he would 
communicate even with the foreman of his printing-house 
only by letter. Because of this seclusion RichardsoiTs novels 
lack breadth, and freshness. They deal with a petty world, 
a world of trifles and scruples, of Puritan niceties of con- 
science, of feminine niceties of sentiment and casuistries of 
deportment. 

The seriousness with which Richardson took himself as 
a novelist appears most markedly in his third novel. Sir 
Charles Grandison (1753), which deals with the love affair 
between the hero and a Miss Harriet Byron. His 
Richardson, like Defoe, was of the middle class. Purpose, 
and distinctly wrote for it. Two serious preoccupations 
of the English middle class at all times, have been deport- 
ment and conscience. The first, as we have seen, was a 


238 


A HISTORY OF EHGLISH LITERATURE 


social interest of great importance in the early eighteenth 
century, when England was learning the lesson of civiliza- 
tion. Richardson began his work with the humble design of 
teaching his readers to write, but his plan broadened until 
it covered the essentials of the art of living. Pamela lives 
a model life for servants ; Clarissa is perfection in a higher 
sphere ; Sir Charles Grandison is an illustration of the 
adaptation of aristocratic manners to middle class instincts. 
But in addition, Richardson's characters are all involved 
in intricate questions of conscience. Clarissa's course is 
determined only after elaborate discussion of the right and 
wrong of each step. In Grandison, it is only after the 
hero has dealt with a succession of difficult circumstances 
arising from the claims upon him of his friend, his friend's 
children, his sister, his ward, and his father's mistress, 
that he yields to his passion for Miss Byron. Richardson 
surely did not exaggerate when he declared the inculcation 
of virtue to be his first object. 

It was something like disgust for Richardson's moral 
pretensions that led his contemporary, Henry Fielding, 
Henry to enter upon his career as a novelist. Field- 

Fieidmg. j n g wag 0 j! hirth than Richardson, his 

father being a soldier of some renown, and his grandfather 
the son of a peer ; he had, too, a far wider and more varied 
experience of life. He was born in 1707, was educated at 
Eton, and afterward went to Leyden to study law. In 
1727 he returned to London, where he supported himself for 
a while by writing plays. Deprived of his profession of 
playwright by the restrictions of the licensing act of 1737, 
he betook himself again to the study of law, meanwhile 
supporting his family by miscellaneous writing. His wife 
died in 1743, leaving him with two children. He struggled 
on until life was made somewhat easier for him by his ap- 
pointment as police magistrate in London, in which office 
he was highly efficient. In 1754, broken in health, he left 
England for Portugal ; he has left a pathetic account of 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


239 


this journey in his Voyage to Lisbon. He died the same 
year. 

It was while Fielding was earning his bread by various 
literary ventures that Richardson's Pamela appeared. 
Struck by the sentimentality of the book, its narrow 
view of life, and the shallowness of its ethics, he began to 
write a burlesque upon it, in which he subjected Pamela's 
brother, Joseph Andrews, to the same tempta- Joseph 

tion from his mistress that Pamela suffered Andrews, 

from her master. Like Pamela, Joseph resists ; but unlike 
her he is turned out of doors, and is left to make his way back 
to his home in the country. Fielding soon lost sight of his 
narrowly satirical purpose in the broader attempt to picture 
the rough English life of post-roads, inns, and country- 
houses. He is not careful of the structure of his story. 
The adventures of Joseph with his companion, Parson 
Adams, do not all advance the plot ; minor characters intro- 
duce digressions ; and the ending is merely a happy acci- 
dent. Yet, on the other hand, Fielding writes of real men 
and women with a precision that comes from direct obser- 
vation. His pictures are often caricatures — as, for example, 
Mrs. Towwouse the innkeeper, and Trulliber, the hog- 
raising parson ; but they are caricatures that tell the truth. 

Fielding's next novel, Jonathan Wild, was a loose narra- 
tive, suggested by the life of the famous rascal whom Defoe 
had celebrated, and written to burlesque the conception of 
greatness held by ordinary writers of biography. In his 
last two stories, however, Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia 
(1751), Fielding developed genuine plots. The former opens 
with the discovery of the hero as a new-born babe in the 
house of a virtuous gentleman, Mr. Allworthy. 

tt i A n ,1 , i * “Tom Jones.” 

Here he grows up with Allworthy s nephew 
Blifil, who out of jealousy ruins Tom's reputation with his 
benefactor, and gets him turned out into the world. Mean- 
while Tom has fallen in love with the daughter of a neigh- 
bor, Miss Sophia Western, who returns his love in spite of 


240 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


the opposition of her father. Tom travels to London, with 
many wayside adventures ; he passes, not unscathed, through 
various temptations ; and finally, by the discovery of the 
secret of his birth and the revelation of Blifil's villainy, he is 
advanced to his happy fortune, the favor of Allworthy and 
marriage with Sophia. 

In all this the chief source of unity is the persistence of 
the hero through a long train of incidents. It is true, 
many of these incidents contribute to unravel the compli- 
cation ; and of the many characters whom the hero gathers 
about him in his progress, he holds a goodly number to the 
end. Still the book is constructed in the loose epic man- 
ner, with little of the dramatic precision of form which 
appears in Clarissa. Moreover, Fielding, in contrast to 
Richardson, believed that the novelist should hold the 
freest, most uninterrupted communication with his read- 
ers ; and accordingly he breaks his narrative by what are, 
in effect, brief essays, giving his opinions on the conduct 
both of fiction and of life. With this view of the novel as 
a literary form, Fielding's successors in England have in 
the main agreed ; and thus it may be said that in structure 
Tom Jones , rather than Clarissa , is the typical English 
novel. 

Amelia is the story of a good wife, who, in spite of 
temptation, remains faithful to a good-natured but rather 
light husband, Captain Booth. The temptation is repeated 
several times, in almost the same form, in the course of 
the book. The happy ending, by which it appears that 
Amelia was really the preferred daughter of her mother, 
and that she has been kept out of her inheritance by 
the treachery of her sister, is almost a repetition of the 
“Amelia »» e pi s °de in Tom Jones. The famous scenes 

in which Amelia and her children wait in vain 
for Booth to come, not only repeat each other, but also 
bear close resemblance to similar scenes in the Heartfree 
family in Jonathan Wild. Finally, Booth is Tom Jones 


TIIE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


241 


grown older but no wiser, and Amelia is only a developed 
portrait of which Sophia Western is the sketch. In 
short, Amelia shows Fielding's weakness as a novelist. 
He was not copious in invention either in respect to the 
outer or the inner life. He was primarily an observer ; 
his great strength is in the Rubens-like fertility with 
which he peopled his world. He saw men and women 
from the outside, and he was fascinated by their appear- 
ance. For the refinements of the novelist's art, for the 
problems of motive and influence, he had little use. Mo- 
tives that were not apparent he was content to leave un- 
revealed ; and he confined himself by preference 
to the simple, epic manner of telling his story. Qualities asa 
The forces which guide his characters are, for 
the most part, natural human needs, for it was these that 
Fielding knew best. His abounding physical vigor was, in 
fact, the greatest of his gifts. It furnished him with un- 
usual keenness of sense, and enabled him to apprehend and 
portray the primary facts of life with extraordinary vivid- 
ness and frankness. 

This physical keenness was the source of Fielding's 
rather coarse realism ; a realism that was in thorough keep- 
ing with the sense of fact of the age, and which Fielding 
possessed, as did his contemporaries Swift and Pope, to the 
exclusion of interest in the spiritual, the unworldly. And 
with Fielding's realism must be connected his moral 
indifference, his acceptance of things as they are. Of the 
smug, prudish morality that the eighteenth century ac- 
cepted for literary purposes, Fielding would have nothing. 
He threw it aside, and presented man full length as he 
found him. Yet though he portrayed men with no reserva- 
tions, he never forgot that he was one with them. From 
this inborn sympathy comes his large, tolerant Fielding’s 
way of looking at things, a view of life that Character - 
often finds relief in raillery, but never in cynicism. He 
laughs, but his laughter is never inhuman like Swift's ; and 


242 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


it is always ready to give place to tenderness and pity. For 
him the tragedy of life lay in the appearance of virtue and 
innocence in a world of evil, cruelty, and deception. In 
"his presentation of this tragedy Fielding is always direct, 
sincere, and simple. The scene in which Amelia prepares 
supper for Booth, and when he does not come puts aside 
the wine untasted to save a sixpence, while her husband is 
losing guineas at the gaming-table, is far more moving 
than are the complicated woes of Clarissa. It is this 
humanity, the most essential quality of the novelist, that 
makes Fielding’s work permanently engaging and powerful. 

It was in human sympathy that Fielding’s successor was 
most notably deficient. Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) was 
a Scotchman, a physician who failed in his profession on 
account of his irascible temper, and who accordingly took 
up the practice of literature. His first novel was Roderick 

Random (1748), a tale of adventure, in which 
“Roderick he made use o± much oi his own experience. 

He had been surgeon’s mate on a man-of-war ; 
accordingly*, after describing Roderick’s youth in Scotland, 
he sends him to sea, taking the opportunity to insert some 
vivid descriptions of naval life. The hero participates in 
the continental wars of George II. , visits Paris, goes to 
South America, where he discovers a conveniently rich 
father, and returns to England to marry the waiting hero- 
ine, Narcissa. 

Roderick Random is merely a succession of adventures, 
related by the hero. Of precisely the same type is 
Smollett’s next novel, Peregrine Pickle { 1751), except that 
the author tells the story. His third, Ferdinand , Count 
Fathom (1753), is more elaborate in plot, for there are two 
heroes, Ferdinand, a type of cruelty and mischief, and 
Renaldo, a type of colorless respectability. Smollett’s last 
novel, Humphrey Clinker , published in 1771, after his 
death, is in many respects his best. The element of plot 
is slight, the story being sustained chiefly by the course of 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


243 


mild adventures attending tlie journeys of a Welsh family 
through England and Scotland. These journeys, however, 
give Smollett an opportunity to describe men and things ^ 
and as a contemporary record, and comment on life and 
manners, the book is of decided interest. Moreover, the 
temper in which life is presented in Humphrey Clinker 
is less harsh than in the earlier books. In Smollett’s 
general, however, Smollett lacked hum or' Vnd Later Novels. 
genial ity. Fun of a ferocious sort, cruel practical jokes, 
abound among his incidents, making us feel that the spirit 
which could find pleasure in them must have been a savage 
one. Furthermore, since such incidents frequently have 
no connection with the plot, and are introduced for their 
own sake, they must be set down as gratuitously unpleas- 
ant. Smollett's early heroes arejrueL^iitL.passionate, but 
otherwise colorless, and always unsympathetic. His hero- 
ines are mere dolls. His best characters are his humors, 
men and women who stand each for a single quality or 
mannerism, and who respond to every stimulus in precisely 
the same way, like figures in a comic opera. Among the 
best of these humors are the characters in Humphrey 
Clinker , — Matthew Bramble, the irascible Welsh misan- 
thropist, his sister Tabitha, Win Jenkins, the maid, who 
exhausts the possibilities of fun in English misspelling ; 
and the sailor characters. Admiral Trunnion in Peregrine 
Pickle , Bowling and Pipes in Roderick Random. Smol- 
lett's chief contribution to the novel was his enlargement 
of its area, and the introduction of at least one special in- 
terest, the sea, as furnishing special types of character and 
incident. 

It is possible to classify the novels thus far mentioned 
according as they advance beyond, or revert to, the simple 
biographic story, in which the element of unity is the 
persistence of the hero. We next come to a book in which 
even this element of structure is lacking, which only by 
an extension of the term can be called a novel at all. The 


244 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Laurence 

Sterne. 


first two volumes of Tristram Shandy appeared in 1760. 
The author, a clergyman, Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), 
began it, as he says, “ with no clear idea of 
what it was to turn out, only a design of shock- 
ing people and amusing myself.” This ill-regulated book 
was a product of Sterne's ill-regulated existence. His 
father was a petty officer in the army, and he himself, 
born in barracks, spent his sickly youth in moving from 
one military station to another. He was sent to Cam- 
bridge, and thence drifted into the Church, obtaining a 
small living in Yorkshire, where, he says, “ books, fid- 
dling, painting, and shooting were my chief amusements.” 
Tristram Shandy made him famous. He was' courted and 
flattered in London, promoted in the Church, and well 
received at Paris, for Shandy was an international success. 
Meanwhile he continued his book, putting into it material 
of any sort which he happened to have on hand. His 
health failing, he spent a year in southern France. Part 
of the experiences of his journey he turned into the 
seventh volume of Shandy, part he saved for a book of 
travels called The Sentimental Journey, of which two 
volumes appeared in 1768, just before his death. 

Tristram Shandy is not a novel in the proper sense of 
the word. Elements of the novel it has, characters and 
incidents, but these are not bound together into a coherent 
story. The book is without plan ; without beginning, prog- 
ress, or end. In the fourth volume the hero laments" that 
though he is a year older than when he began to 
write, he has not got beyond his first day's life. 
The author shifts arbitrarily from one character to another, 
begins conversations in the middle, interrupts them with 
little essays full of odd learning, prepares for stories which 
are never told and scenes between his characters which are 
never acted. He introduces a new character, the Widow 
Wadman, with whom Tristram's Uncle Toby falls in love, 
by a blank page, on which the reader can write his own 


‘ ‘ Tristram 
Shandy. ’ ’ 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 


245 


description. The style is given over to mannerism, 
abounds in trick and innuendo, and has none of the formal 
regularity that had marked written prose since the time of 
Dryden ; but is full of the suggestiveness, the half' lights, of 
brilliant talk. Like Sterne's life, the book is an exaltation 
of whim. In his life and in his art he was without any 
sense of propriety, without respect for the conventions that 
the eighteenth century was so much interested in establish- 
ing. His moral tone is that of the Restoration ; his style 
reminds one of the early seventeenth century. Altogether 
he represents a reaction from the rigid standards, moral 
and artistic, of Addison and Richardson. 

Writing thus directly from his temperament, at the 
suggestion of his moods, Sterne is curiously subjective. 
For example, he treats passion, not because it exists as 
a cardinal fact of life, but because he can draw from it 
a stimulus for himself and his readers. His humor, too, 
arises not from a broad vision of the world as comedy, but 
from a personal sense of the incongruous sug- sterne’s senti- 
gestions that hang about simple, commonplace, mentahsm - 
or even tragic circumstances. He sits down to weep beside 
the poor insane Maria, who stares alternately at him and 
at her goat. “Do you see any resemblance?" he asks. 
Again, his pathos is not the sympathy of the strong man 
who weeps because he must. His tears are not wrung 
from him by the tragedy of existence ; on the contrary, he 
goes about seeking occasion for feeling. He is thus the 
chief of sentimentalists, of those who write not to picture 
the world as it is, but to draw from it suggestions for cer- 
tain moods and feelings. This attitude of mind, which 
became for a time a leading fashion in literature, found 
its model largely in Tristram Shandy . 

But there is a stronger reason than this for Sterne’s in- 
fluence. He has a wonderful power of imparting genuine 
human quality to his characters, through all the eccen- 
tricities of their lives and surroundings. He makes no use 


246 


A HISTOBY OF ENGLISH LITEKATUKE 


His Humanity. 


of the ordinary material of the novelist,— of men’s desires, 
passions, political or religions beliefs, social relations, suc- 
cess or failure. His characters live in a world of their 
own. Tristram’s father is absorbed in curious learning 
and speculation ; his Uncle Toby is occupied in acting out, 
in his garden, with the aid of his servant. Cor- 
poral Trim, the battles and sieges that he has 
seen. And yet these characters live, live by virtue of the 
most adroit suggestion of humanity, in their speech, their 
facial expression, their gestures and attitudes. With his 
usual self-consciousness Sterne calls attention to his method, 
a method new in eighteenth century literature. “ You per- 
ceive,” he says, “ that the drawing of my Uncle Toby’s 
character went on gently all the time — not the great con- 
tours of it, — that was impossible — but some familiar strokes 
and faint designations of it were here and there touched 
on as we went along, so that you are much better ac- 
quainted with my Uncle Toby now than you were before.” 
By this method Sterne gives to his characters an abiding 
reality and charm. They have, with the characters of 
Cervantes and Shakespeare, with Quixote and Falstaff, the 
note of highest artistic distinction. They are among the 
very few “ creations ” of literature. 

Sterne’s habit of playing directly upon the sensibility of 
his readers was freely imitated. The most notable instance 
of such imitation is found in The Man of Feel- 

Mackenzie’s 

‘ ‘ Man of ^ ing (1771), by Henry Mackenzie. This book 

shows also the influence of Sterne’s loosfi struct- 
ure, though Mackenzie explains the breaks in his story by 
the theory of a mutilated manuscript. The hero’s faculty 
for finding tragedy in the lot of man, and his morbid 
emotion over it, connect the book with the “ graveyard 
poetry” of Young and of other precursors of the Romantic 
Movement. 

Signs of a possibly conscious reaction toward a more 
wholesome view of life than Sterne’s, are to be found in 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


247 


a book as famous as Tristram Sliandy , Oliver Gold- 
smith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766). The Vicar of Wakefield 

is a perfect expression of homely English senti- 

i x »/ o Goldsmith’s 

ment. That sentiment naturally gathers about “Vicar of 

the family life. The Vicar and his wife and Wakefield * 
children are thrown into poverty. Worse misfortune 
comes in the flight of the elder daughter, Olivia, who is 
lured away by an unworthy lover ; in the burning of their 
poor house ; in the imprisonment of the father for debt. 
But through all these troubles shines the Vicar's love for 
his family, and his confidence in life ; and at the end his 
faith in the best of all possible worlds emerges triumphant. 
The Vicar is, it is true, the only character in the book. 
The Vicar’s wife and children ; young Squire Thornhill, and 
his uncle Sir William Thornhill, who wanders through the 
book in an impossible incognito ; the convenient Jenkinson, 
who has craftily made of Olivia's mock marriage a real one; — 
all these are shadowy forms of which we get but glimpses as 
they cross the light of the Vicar's steady personality. The 
Vicar animates not only the characters, but the spirit and 
purpose of the book. Goldsmith is not a realist. To him, 
as to Sterne, the positivism of the early century, with its de- 
mand for the presentation of life as it is, made no appeal. 
His world is an ideal one. Troubles and disasters accumu- 
late like threatening clouds, but only to resolve themselves 
into beneficent showers. Suffering is not a problem ; it is 
merely an artistic device to make the world seem more 
beautiful. Evil loses its essential quality ; Olivia is mar- 
ried to a rake who does not love her, but even this we ac- 
cept confidently as a part of the happy outcome, so con- 
tagious is Goldsmith’s optimism. 

Goldsmith used one element of the Arcadian romance, and 
made of it a distinct contribution to the modern His use of 
novel. The element of outdoor scene had Scene * 
been largely neglected by his predecessors. Richardson had 
shown care and skill in the arrangement of his interiors ; 


248 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Fielding had given a few set pieces of description, show- 
ing the preference of eighteenth century taste for artificial 
over natural beauty ; but Goldsmith pictured nature with 
real feeling for it. He made it, especially in the early 
idyllic scenes of his novel, a happy reinforcement of his 
theme of domestic bliss and tranquillity ; and it is, through- 
out the book, a symbol of the eternal goodness of the world, 
another reason for putting trust in life. 

With the possible exception of lyric poetry, the novel is 
the form of literature which has been most successfully 
practised by women. In the period before Defoe, the 
most popular writers of romance were women, Mrs. Behn 
and Mrs. Manley. Miss Sarah Fielding, sister of the nov- 
elist, wrote a story, David Simple, which both Richardson 
and Fielding praised. Later in the century the line of 
realists, broken by Sterne and Goldsmith, was 
Miss Bumey. con ^ nue( j by Miss Fanny Burney (1752-1840), 

whose first story, Evelina, appeared in 1778. Dr. John- 
son, who was her father’s friend, liked the book, and his 
support had much to do with its immediate success, though 
his influence on the style of her later books cannot be called 
happy. With an achieved literary reputation. Miss Burney, 
who had been glad to get twenty pounds for Evelina, sold 
her second book, Cecilia, for two thousand. Soon after 
this she became a maid of honor to Queen Charlotte ; and 
after escaping from the intolerable constraints of this situa- 
tion she married General D’Arblay, by whose name she is 
usually known. At long intervals she followed her early 
works with two others, which are now forgotten. 

Evelina is the story of a young girl’s introduction to the 
great world, told chiefly by herself in letters to her guar- 
dian. Her path is beset by rival suitors, and made doubt- 
Her Novels. b y a m y stei 7 about her own birth ; but her 
course is guided steadily by conscience and pro- 
priety. Indeed, both Evelina and Cecilia are of the family 
of Clarissa : both are a bit prudish, over-scrupulous, over- 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


249 


sensitive. The other characters are men and women 
drawn from nature, as Macaulay says, but not from life, 
each being developed in accordance with a single dominant 
passion or peculiarity. Like her model, Richardson, Miss 
Burney wrote to correct the evils of the time. Her minor 
characters were intended to make various faults and affec- 
tations contemptible or ridiculous, through an extrava- 
gant presentation of them. But as the element of truth is 
largely present in successful satire, it follows that Miss 
Burney's novels give us fair pictures of the age in which 
she lived. In Evelina we see reflected the uncouthness of 
the middle classes, the boorishness of their amusements, 
and their fondness for practical jokes ; and in Cecilia the 
studies of contemporary life are still more detailed. Al- 
together Miss Burney's work will live, if not by its intrinsic 
interest, at least as a document of importance in the social 
history of England. \yf 

The novel of the eighteenth century from Defoe to Miss 
Burney, was, on the whole, conceived on lines which made 
it acceptable to the positive, matter-of-fact temperament 
of the age. The novelists endeavored to deal with things 
as they were, though they usually claimed the privilege of 
making them somewhat better. Toward the close of the 
century, however, the novel felt the stimulus of a new 
spiritual force, the Romantic Movement. This The Romantic 
movement, treated at length in the next chap- Movement - 
ter, may be briefly described as a reawakening of the im- 
agination ; a revival of pleasure in the emotions of fear, 
wonder, and mystery, which the sceptical spirit had ban- 
ished. The new emotional life led men away from the 
narrow walks of society to nature, and to the mediaeval 
past. With the return to nature came also a feeling for 
the individual apart from his place in society, and a de- 
mand for his free development in spite of laws and conven- 
tions. These new motives were faithfully reflected in the 
fiction of the period. In addition to the realistic novel, 


250 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


which dealt with social life and manners, there appeared 
the romance, which represented the purely emotional in- 
terest in nature and in the past, and the humanitarian 
novel, which seriously undertook to right the wrongs sus- 
tained by the individual at the hands of society. These 
three schools, the realists, of whom Miss Austen is the best 
example, the romancers, of whom Scott became the chief, 
and the missionaries, of whom Godwin was the most pow- 
erful, have continued, with innumerable divergences, until 
the present time. 

The long list of romances of the period begins with The 
Castle of Otranto , published as early as 1764. It was the 
waipoie’s wor k °f Horace Walpole (1717-1797), one of the 
Otranto 6 ,0,f ^ ea( ^ ers °f that fashion which, in its preference 

for the grotesque and barbarous instead of the 
classically simple and civilized, was called “gothic.” In 
The Castle of Otranto he tried to paint the domestic life 
and manners of the feudal period, “as agitated by the 
action of supernatural machinery such as the superstition 
of the time might have accepted.” With this excuse for 
the introduction of supernatural elements, no explanation 
of them by rational causes is needed, and none is attempted. 
A portrait steps from its panel and walks abroad, a statue 
sheds blood, a helmet of gigantic size crashes down into 
the courtyard, and gives symbolical accompaniment to the 
action of the story by dreadfully waving its plumes, all 
without the least apology from the author. His only effort 
is to give an air of reality to such impossibilities by making 
his characters natural, and by painting the manners of the 
time faithfully. In neither attempt was he highly suc- 
cessful. That he did give his readers a genuine attack of 
the horrors, however, is proved by excellent testimony, for 
example, that of his friend Thomas Gray. For the rest, 
Walpole gave to the gothic romance the elements on which 
it was to thrive for a generation to come, — a hero sullied by 
unmentionable crimes, several persecuted heroines, a castle 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


251 


with secret passages and lianiited rooms, and a plentiful 
sprinkling of supernatural terrors. 

This tale added to the attractions of remote time those 
of a distant and marvellous land ; it substituted for the crea- 
tions of mediaeval superstition the mysteries of other Gothic 
oriental necromancy ; and it spiced the whole Romanc es. 
with a dash of Eastern voluptuousness. Another book of 
importance in the development of the gothic romance, is 
The History of the Calijrfi Vathek (1784), written by 
William Beckford. Gothic romances were also produced 
by Matthew Gregory Lewis, whose Monk (1795) was 
the most popular book of its time, and whose Bravo 
of Venice (1804), has for its hero a distinct precursor of 
the Byronic type, an individual developed into a quite 
transcendent personality by feeding on his wrongs and 
crimes. 

The most successful producer of gothic stories was Mrs. 
Anne RadcliHe (1764-1823), who in the last decade of the 
century wrote five elaborate romances, the most famous 
being The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and The Italian 
(1797). These have the faults and virtues of their type. 
They abound in mysterious incident, skilfully used ; but 
they show an increasing tendency toward finding a rational 
explanation for apparently supernatural occurrences. In 
plot they are carefully constructed to keep the Mrg Radcliffe 
reader guessing as to which of several possible 
explanations is the true one. They are decorated with elab- 
orate set pieces of description, involving the romantic ele- 
ments of Italian landscape, as treated by the painters 
Claude or Salvator Rosa ; but there is no accuracy in the 
local color, which is lavishly used, and no historical truth 
in the representation of manners and institutions of the 
past. The characters are either extravagantly false or 
mildly conventional. Of Elena, in The Italian , we are 
told that “her features were of the Greek outline, and 
though they expressed the tranquillity of an elegant mind, 


252 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


her dark blue eyes sparkled with intelligence.” Beyond 
this the stereotyped formula can hardly go. 

Although Walpole in his preface to the Castle of Otranto 
points a moral for his readers, the gothic romance is 
frankly without any purpose save that of amusing. A far 
more strenuous development of the novel was going on at 
The Revoiu- the hands of the group of revolutionary roman- 
tiomsts . ticists, of whom William Godwin (1756-1836) 
was the chief. With them the novel became a tract ; it 
was put out simply as part of a propaganda. The plot was 
arranged, and the characters were drawn, to expose a social 
evil or to show its remedy. Naturally, such books sub- 
ordinated art to purpose, and for that reason few of them 
are remembered ; but one of the mildest of them. Day’s 
Sandford and Merton , which dealt with education, is still 
a classic for children. 

The strongest book of this class was William Godwin’s 
Caleb Williams (1794). Godwin was one of the most earn- 
God win’s es ^ su PP or ^ ers England of the French Rev- 
“ Caleb wm- olution. He wrote Caleb Williams as a tract 
against the British Constitution and the ideals 
of aristocratic society, which Burke fought so hard to 
maintain. The real hero, Falkland, under great provo- 
cation has committed a murder, and in obedience to the 
false god of his class. Reputation, he has allowed a poor 
peasant to suffer the penalty for it. By accident his secre- 
tary, Caleb Williams, becomes possessed of the secret, and 
in self-preservation Falkland feels bound to crush him. 
The author gives a forcible account of the way in which an 
aristocrat like Falkland can use the forces of society and 
law against an individual of a lower class ; and he presents 
movingly the sufferings of such an individual under this 
persecution. But more moving still is the picture of the 
ruin of a benevolent and elevated character by the posses- 
sion of aristocratic power, and by subjection to aristocratic 
prejudices. The villain in the book is chivalry, and Falk- 
land, even more than Williams, is its victim. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THE REVIVAL OF ROMAN- 
TICISM 

In the course of Chapter X (p. 211) we noted the beginnings 
of a revolt against the restraint and formalism which the 
school of Dryden and Pope had imposed upon Beginnings 
poetry. When Pope died, the classical ideal Romantic 
had dominated literature for a half-century. Revolt -” 
The civilizing influence of this classical era had been enor- 
mous ; and its chastening effect upon literature, due to its 
repudiation of extravagance and excess, its insistence upon 
reasonableness and good form, had been in the highest 
degree salutary. But in its zeal for order the Augustan 
age had sacrificed too much, and even before Pope's com- 
manding presence was removed, there became apparent a 
wide-spread dissatisfaction with the circumscribed nature 
of Augustan poetry. Indeed, the very perfection of Pope's 
attainment urged the more original of his successors to seek 
new fields. Accordingly, we find the group of poets who 
occupy the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Thom- 
son, Collins, Young, and Gray, reaching out in various 
directions to reclaim for poetry sources of inspiration and 
modes of utterance which had been long forgotten or for- 
bidden. These poets were the vanguard of that great move- 
ment for aesthetic freedom, which culminated at the end of 
the century in Wordsworth and Coleridge, and which we 
call the Romantic Movement. 

The earliest of this group of poets, James Thomson (1700- 
1748), was a Scotchman, who came up to London in 1725. 
The following year he published the first section, “ Win- 

253 


254 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ter,” of a poem which he afterward continued under the 
titles “ Summer,” “Spring,” and “Autumn,” and which 
Thomson’s was published in 1730 as The Seasons. To a 
“ Seasons.” rea( j er 0 f to-day, accustomed to a far deeper and 
subtler appreciation of nature than Thomson was capable 
of, this poem seems a rather humdrum chronicling of the 
sights, experiences, and thoughts connected with the 
changes of the year ; and the moral digressions, the compli- 
ments to patrons, the pseudo-classic personifications, and 
Novelty Of the frequently stilted rhetoric, tend to obscure 
Nature- n>s the real freshness and truth of Thomson's ob- 
studies. servation. But to the readers of his own day 
the novelty was great. For two generations the first- 
hand study of nature had been neglected. Literature 
had found its interests in urban life ; or, if it ventured 
into the country at all, it was into the conventional, un- 
real country of the pastoral tradition. The Augustan age 
cared more for a formal garden in the Dutch or Italian 
style, than for the sublimest natural landscape in the 
world ; and when, by the necessity of their subject, Au- 
gustan authors had touched upon ordinary natural phe- 
nomena, they had striven to conceal the rudeness of their 
theme by vague and elegant circumlocution. "Accordingly, 
Thomson's poem had an aspect of daring innovation. His 
views of English landscape, now panoramic and now de- 
tailed, his description of the first spring showers, of the 
summer thunderstorms, and of the terrors of the wintry 
night, showed an honest understanding and love of that 
to which the eye had long been blind. In the Hymn with 
which The Seasons concludes, a higher mood appears ; a 
mood of religious ecstasy in the presence of Nature, pro- 
phetic of Wordsworth, by whom, indeed, Thomson was 
highly valued : — 

“Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him ; 

Breathe your still song into the reaper’s heart 

As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.” 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


255 


The Seasons is in blank verse, and therefore in form also 

is a departure from the accepted canons of the day. In The 

Castle of Indolence , published in 1748, Thomson made a 

still more revolutionary move, by adopting the Spenserian 

stanza.* His allegiance to Spenser is more than formal. 

He succeeds in recapturing much of the mas- << The Castle 

ter's rich, long-drawn music; and he steeps ?f indolence”; 
, . , , . . , ~ . , 1 its Romantic 

ms allegory in the Spenserian atmosphere of color. 

mirage-like splendor. The embowered castle of the en- 
chanter Indolence and his captives, the “land of drowsy- 
head,” with its “listless climate,” where the plaint of 
stockdoves mingles with the sighing of the hill-side pines 
and with the murmur of the distant sea, are described with 
an art which made The Castle of Indolence a fruitful 
influence in romantic verse, even as late as Keats. 

As Thomson exemplifies the Spenserian influence at work 
in the eighteenth century, Collins, Young, and Gray mark 
the recurrence to Milton. Young reverted to 
Milton's blank verse ; Collins and Gray abound Spenser and 
in echoes, and indeed in literal borrowings, from Romantic 
Milton's earlier lyrical work. To Milton's ex- 
ample in “ L' Allegro” and “II Penseroso” is perhaps due 
the fact that both these poets, after they had freed them- 
selves from the other machinery of pseudo-classic verse, 
persisted in the use of those lifeless personifications — “wan 
Despair,” “brown Exercise,” “Music, sphere-descended 
Maid” — in which the Augustan age delighted. 

William Collins (1721-1759) was a delicate, nervously 
irresolute spirit, who lived his life under the shadow of a 
constitutional despondency which deepened at last into 
insanity. He was an ardent disciple of Thomson's, and 
when he came up to London, he settled near Thomson's 
house in Kew Lane, where the elder poet was illustrating 
his romantic tendencies by writing verse in the moonlight, 

* This stanza had been used earlier in the century by parodists, and 
by Shenstone in a short poem, The Schoolmistress. 


256 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


while listening to the nightingales in Richmond Gardens- 
In 1747 Collins published a slender volume of Odes , in 
which we can trace, more surely than in Thom- 
* son's work, the recovery of the greater qualities 
of poetry. The exquisite “Ode to Evening" shows a 
sympathy with nature, and an observation of her aspects, 
subtler and more suggestive than that displayed in The 
Seasons. The ode is unrhymed, and has a low, meditative, 
twilight music. The famous “Ode on the Passions " is, 
on the contrary, very rich and elaborate in its metrical 
form, and it illustrates the influence upon Collins of Mil- 
ton's lyrical art. The Passions here are shadowy personi- 
fications, and the effect of the whole poem is rather cold, 
but it shows clearly that the technical secrets of great 
lyrical poetry were beginning to be rediscovered. 

Another ode of Collins's, “ On the Popular Superstitions 
of the Highlands" (1749), is one of the most interesting 
landmarks in the history of the romantic 

* * Ode on . J 

petitions ” rev * va ** The P ur P ose of the poem is to recom- 
mend the native folk-lore of Scotland as 
poetic material. Collins lets his fancy play over the 
folk-myths of water-witch, pygmy, and will-o'-the-wisp, 
and over all the creatures of that fairy world which the 
mediaeval mind had created. With kindling imagination 
he describes the wild Northern islands, whose inhabitants 
subsist on birds' eggs found among the sea-cliffs where 
the bee is never heard to murmur ; and he transports us 
to that mysterious region, where “ beneath the showery 
West" the buried kings stalk forth at midnight 

“In pageant robes and wreathed in sheeny gold, 

And on their twilight tombs aSrial council hold.” 

Here we see several of the leading traits of romanticism ; 
interest in the mysterious and supernatural, in strange and 
remote conditions of human life, and in the Middle Ages as 
they appeared in vague chiaroscuro through a veil of dream. 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


•f 25?: 

\V jl 

Collinses constitutional melancholy found little egres- 
sion in his verse ; it appears only as a kind of • romantic 
sensibility penetrating his best lyrics, such as the “ Dirge 
in Cymbeline" and “How sleep the brave," and casting 
here and there a faint flush of warmth over his odes. The 
funereal broodings and romantic despair, characteristic of 
the new movement, found their most striking expression in 
the Night Thoughts of Edward Young (1681- Young’s “ Night 
1765), published in 1742-1744, when the au- Thou g hts -" 
thor was over sixty. The Night Thoughts are a series of 
reflections upon the brevity and tragic uncertainties of 
life, leading to a view of religion as man’s consoler. The 
poet dwells, sometimes with tragic force and gloomy mag- 
nificence of phrase, oftener with a hollow and pompous 
rhetoric, upon the solitude of the tomb, and the grim cir- 
cumstances of death. In . the same year in which the 
Night Thoughts were begun, a far greater poet, Thomas 
Gray, began his famous “ Elegy in a Country Churchyard," 
in which is revealed the same sombre view of man’s life 
and destiny, though softened and broadened and human- 
ized in a way to make the poem not only a perfect work of 
art, but a permanent expression of the mood it embodies. 

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) lived the life of a scholar and 
recluse at Cambridge, where in his later years he held a 
professorship of history, but delivered no lect- Gray 
ures. The range of his intellectual interests, 
as shown by his letters, journals, and prose remains, was 
immense, including, besides ancient and modern literature, 
music, painting, architecture, and natural science. He 
was sensitive to all the finer influences of the time ; and his 
development furnishes a kind of index to the spiritual 
forces at work, many years before they found a general 
outlet. 

Gray was a delightful letter-writer and diarist, and his 
letters and journals form a very complete commentary on 
the intellectual movements of the period. Particularly in- 


258 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


teresting are those passages which show in him the new 
sensibility to picturesque scenery and to Gothic architect- 
ure, two of the great enthusiasms of the romantic inno- 
vators. In a letter written in early life from 
Switzerland, during a protracted tour which 
Architecture. ] ie ma( j e w ith his friend Horace Walpole, he 
writes of the scenery about the Grande Chartreuse : “Not 
a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with 
religion and poetry. . . One need not have a v.ery 

fantastic imagination to see spirits there at noonday.” 
Years after, in the Scotch highlands, he whites of the 
mountains as “ those monstrous creatures of God,” and 
declares that they “ ought to be visited in pilgrimage once 
a year.” A generation before Gray wrote from the Grande 
Chartreuse, Addison had crossed the Alps, and dismissed 
the experience thus : “A very troublesome journey. . . 
You can't imagine how I am pleased with the sight of a 
plain.” Gray's enthusiasm over the marvels of mediaeval 
architecture at Rheims and Siena, contrasts also with Ad- 
dison's comparison of the nobility of the classic Pantheon 
with the “meanness of manner” in the Gothic cathedrals. 
Toward the end of his life Gray made one of his “ Lillipu- 
tian journeys” to the English Lake country afterward 
made famous by Wordsworth's poetry. The journal which 
he kept on this occasion is remarkable for the intimate 
sympathy which it shows with the changes of mood in the 
landscape, under variations of weather and time of day. To 
both Thomson and Collins the landscape had been chiefly 
a picture ; Gray sees nature with a more modern eye, as a 
living thing full of sentiment and meaning. 

Gray's poetry, the bulk of which is very small, falls into 
three periods. His early odes, written in 1742, of which 
ms First the best known are those “On Spring” and 
Period. ff On a p)j s t an t; Prospect of Eton College,” have 
much of the moralizing tone of Queen Anne poetry ; though 
in their metrical form, in their sympathy with nature, and 


His Apprecia- 
tion of Nature 
and of Gothic 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


259 


in their vague dejection, they show the romantic leaven at 
work. Gray's second period (1750-1757) includes the “Elegy 
in a Country Churchyard "* and his two most ambitious 
odes, “The Progress of Poesy" and “The 
Bard." The Elegy, perhaps the most widely Sodf^The 6 ' 
known and loved of English poems, is the finest Elegy * 
flower of that “ literature of melancholy " which Milton's II 
Penseroso, acting upon the awakening romantic sense of the 
second quarter of the eighteenth century, brought forth in 
remarkable profusion. A large part of the charm of the 
Elegy comes from the poet's person al, sensitive approach to 
his subject. He lingers in the churchyard, noting the signs 
of approaching nightfall, until the atmosphere of twilight 
musing is established, after which his reflections upon life 
and death have a tone of sad and intimate sincerity. In its 
recognition of the dignity of simple lives lived close to the 
soil, and in its sympathy with their fate, the Elegy shows 
the breaking-up of the hard forms into which social feel- 
ing had stiffened, and looks forward to the humanitarian 
enthusiasm which marked the later phases of romantic 
poetry. “ The Progress of Poesy " is a Pindaric 
ode, of the same type as Dryden's “ Alexander's ress ot° g 
Feast," but (under Milton's influence) it is more Poesy * 
richly rhymed, fuller of metrical artifice and surprise. It 
has the too conscious elegance of diction and employs the 
pseudo-classic mythology of Queen Anne poetry, but in 
the richness of its music it shows the romantic temper. 
“ The Bard " is more distinctly romantic, both 
in subject and treatment. An ancient minstrel, 
the last of the Welsh singers, escaped from Edward's mas- 
sacre, stops the king in a wild mountain -pass, and proph- 
esies the terrors which are to gather over his descendants. 
This poem, with its imaginative rekindling of the passion 
of an ancient and perished people, shows, like Collins's ode 
on the Superstitions of the Highlands, that reversion to 
* Begun in 1742, but laid aside and not finished until 1750. 


260 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


the Middle Ages for inspiration, which soon became the 
leading feature of romantic art. The third period of 
His Third Gray’s production shows how deep a hold medi- 
Emdicand 6 " aevalism had already taken on him. He mastered 
Welsh studies. l ce landi C , at that time an almost unheard-of 
language, and studied Welsh. The fruit of these researches 
was two powerful translations, as grim and picturesque 
as the most romantic heart .could desire, — “The Fatal 
Sisters” and “The Descent of Odin” (1761). 

This newly awakened interest in the Middle Ages led 
Horace Walpole to rebuild his villa at Strawberry Hill, in 
the “gothic” style, and to write his celebrated gothic 
romance, The Castle of Otranto (see p. 250). The word 
“gothic” was used vaguely to cover everything mediaeval, 
or supposedly mediaeval. A great stimulus was given to 
the curiosity concerning mediaeval literature, by the ap- 
pearance in 1765 of a ballad collection entitled Reliques of 
“Percy’s Ancient English Poetry , gathered together by 
Reliques.” Bishop Percy, an antiquarian scholar with liter- 
ary tastes. These ballads had a great effect in quickening 
the romantic impulse, by virtue of their naive feeling and 
simple, passionate expression. About the same time as 
the Reliques, appeared another book which, though not so 
genuine, had an even greater effect. This was an epic 
poem in irregular chanting prose, entitled Fingal, pur- 
porting to have been originally written in the ancient 
Gaelic tongue of the Scotch highlands, by 
Ossian, the son of Fingal, in a dim heroic past. 
The figures of the story are shadowy and large, the scenery 
wild, the imagery, at least to an uncritical reader, touched 
with a certain primitive sublimity and grandeur, and the 
whole pervaded by an atmosphere of melancholy which is 
emphasized in the sighing cadences of the style. Here is 
a specimen : 

By the side of a rock on the hill, beneath the ancient trees, 
old Ossian sat on the moss ; the last of the race of Fingal. 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


261 


Ball through the leafless trees he heard the voice of the north. 
. . . Fair with her locks of gold, her smooth neck, and 

her breasts of snow ; fair as the spirits of the hills when at 
silent noon they glide along the heath — came Minvane the 
maid. Fingal, she softly saith, loose me my brother Gaul. 
Loose me the hope of my race, the terror of all but Fingal. 

. . . Take thy brother, O Minvane, thou fairer than the 

snows of the north ! 

These “ Ossianic” poems seem to have been in large part 
a clever literary fabrication, the work of a young Scotch- 
man named Macpherson, who probably got his hint from 
genuine fragments of old Erse poetry. Their air of pri- 
meval sublimity was specious enough to make them pass 
current, with an age which was weary of the classical tra- 
ditions and eager for novel sensation ; and their influence 
was enormous, not only in England but upon the conti- 
nent, in furthering the new taste for the mysterious past. 

Less successful in attracting attention, but more signifi- 
cant because springing from a deeper artistic instinct, was 
the series of literary forgeries put forth by the Chatterton , s 
“ marvellous boy,” Thomas Chatterton (1752- Mediaeval 
1770). His childhood was passed in the shadow of 
the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol ; and the beauti- 
ful old building, with its rich historical associations, threw 
upon his sensitive mind a spell which w'as almost a mania. 
Some old parchments from the archives of the church fell 
into his hands ; while deciphering them he conceived the 
daring scheme of composing poems and prose pieces in the 
mediaeval style and diction, and of palming them off upon 
the good burghers of the town, as originals which he had 
unearthed in the muniment room of the church. Incredible 
as it seems, he began this work in his twelfth year. The 
first “historical” document which he submitted to liis 
townsmen, was a description of the opening of the old 
Bristol bridge. As this aroused some interest, he composed 
an elaborate series of poems and prose pieces grouped about 


262 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


the figure of William Canynge, mayor of Bristol under 
Henry VI., purporting to be the work of one Rowley, a 
fifteenth century priest. Some of the poems, especially 
“The Bristowe Tragedy,” and the “ Ballade of 
Charitie,” are of remarkable beauty and force ; and when we 
remember that the author of them was scarcely more than 
a child, they become astonishing. After a proud struggle 
to make his living by his pen, Chatterton ended his mor- 
bid and amazingly precocious life by suicide in a London 
garret, at the age of nineteen. He was a signal example 
of the romantic temper destined soon to spread through 
the nation. It was fitting that, when the battle of the new 
poetry was fought and won, Keats should dedicate En- 
dymion to his memory, and Shelley should place him in 
¥ Adonais” among the “ inheritors of unfulfilled renown.” 

It must be held in mind that the new literary movement 
which we have been tracing, was the work of a small coterie 
persistence of men, for the most part comparatively obscure. 
sIcaiTradl- They were the revolutionists, who had declared 
their independence of the reigning mode. But 
the conservative writers, with Johnson and Goldsmith at 


their head, still had an almost unimpaired authority, and 
the classical traditions continued to be widely accepted to 
the very end of the century. Symptoms of alarm, however, 
are frequent among those writers who felt bound to support 
the conservative side ; among which signs the chief is 
Johnson's Lives of the Poets , written to uphold the old doc- 
trines and to confound the new. Under this stimulus, the 
satellites of the great Doctor preached with renewed fervor 
the gospel of conformity ; outwardly the classical traditions 
inward remained all but intact. But inwardly they 
SSsSsm.° f were bein S ra P idl y impaired. Goldsmith him- 
self, in his Deserted Village and Vicar of Wake- 
field, shows touches of the new spirit. Burke, as has been 
shown, fought the battle of political conservatism with 
romantic weapons. The novels of Richardson, by their 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


2G3 


intimate study of the human heart, and those of Sterne, 
by their strange and fascinating sentimentalism, tended to 
overthrow reason, and to set up emotion, as the guiding 
principle of literature. Indeed, the whole eighteenth cen- 
tury novel, though it lies outside the romantic movement 
narrowly considered, worked in the same direction with 
it, by enlarging men's sympathy with human life in all 
its forms. 

After 1780, signs of change in the literary heavens became 
more frequent and pronounced. George Crabbe (1754- 
1832), although he used the couplet verse and 
considered himself a faithful member of the 
school of Pope, marks the advent of a new realism in the 
poetic treatment of human life. He was born in a poor 
fishing village on the German ocean ; and in his best early 
poem, The Village (1783), he painted the life of the poor 
as he knew it, sternly and uncompromisingly, — the steam- 
ing flats and stubbly commons, the damp and 

. * t • l l His Realism. 

dirty houses, the hostile sea, from which only a 
wretched living could be wrung, the men and women 
degraded by harsh labor and coarse dissipation. By his 
sincerity he drove the artificial sentiment of the age from 
one more of its strongholds. Crabbe was generously be- 
friended by Burke, at a time when he was in dire distress ; 
and through Burke's influence he was admitted to holy 
orders. He settled in the country, and for twenty-two years 
after his first success, was completely silent. When he came 
forward once more, with The Borough (1810) and Tales of 
the Hall (1819), it was to find himself in a changed world, in 
which singers and seers far greater than he, had transformed 
the face of literature ; so that his country sketches and 
tales, written still in the old-fashioned couplet, looked 
oddly still and belated. But his work, at its best, is as 
sterling as it is ungraceful, and the earlier portion of it did 
good service in breaking up the artificialism of the eigh- 
teenth century. 


264 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


A more potent, but equally involuntary work of revolu- 
tion was performed by William Cowper (1731-1800). He was 
a life-long victim of nervous despondency, and 
cowper. ^ig wea k ness was added an abnormal prone- 

ness to religious terror. His early life was spent at West- 
minster school, and as a law-student in London. Fits of 
gayety, and states of mystical exaltation, were succeeded by 
terrible periods of depression, and at last by insanity. At 
the age of fifty- two, he was living in the obscure village of 
Olney, where, under the care of a widow, Mrs. IJnwin, sev- 
eral years his senior, he was spending a peaceful interval 
between two attacks of religious melancholia. As an intel- 
lectual pastime, he began to write verse, in which he had 
some proficiency. At first he produced mere essays, in the 
dullest abstract style of the preceding age. At the sugges- 
tion of one Lady Austen, a bright and somewhat worldly 
woman who was attracted by his shy, distraught person- 
ality, he began a long poem in blank verse. The subject 
playfully suggested by Lady Austen was “ The Sofa,” an 
article of furniture then novel. Cowper dutifully “sang 
the sofa.” But he did not cease there ; he proceeded to 
paint with animated realism the landscapes, the changes 
of seasons, the human types and employments of the 
rural world about him, as well as his own simple pleasures 
and occupations. The poem was published in 

«< The Task.” r 1 r 

1785, as The Task. A large portion of The Task 
is conventional enough, to be sure, and very dreary read- 
ing ; but here and there one comes upon little vignettes, — 
the figure of a teamster driving homeward in a snowstorm, 
a postman hurrying through the village with his eagerly 
awaited bag of news from the great world, ploughmen at 
work in the flat fields by the Ouse, — which are instinct with 
vivid natural life. The amusing ballad of “John Gilpin” 
also belongs to this bright period of CowpeFs life. He af- 
terward relapsed into melancholy, broken at intervals by a 
ray of poetic inspiration such as produced his touching 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


265 


lines “On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture Out of 
Norfolk/' deservedly the best known of his poems. His. 
last poem, entitled “ The Castaway," is a cry of despair 
from the depths of visionary anguish into which he was 
now hopelessly plunged. 

While Crabbe and Cowper were at work, two other inno- 
vators, endowed with vast energy and working with superb 
self-confidence, were already passing beyond them. One 
of these was William Blake, an obscure London engraver ; 
the other was Robert Burns, a Scotch ploughman. 

William Blake (1757-1827), though a poet and a mystic 
of the most extraordinary genius, had little or no influence 
on his generation . The greater part of his mes- Blakg 

sage was so obscure, so wild, so incoherently de- 
livered, that even now, after much study, his commentators 
have succeeded in making clear only a portion of what he 
wrote. . He belonged to that type of mind which in super- 
stitious ages is called “possessed." When a very young 
child, he one day screamed with fear, because, he said, he 
had seen God put his face to the window. In His Mysti _ 
boyhood he saw several angels, very bright, cism * 
standing in a tree by the roadside. In his manhood, the 
earth and the air were for him full of spiritual presences, 
all concerned with his fate or with that of his friends. The 
following extract from some verses, written in mature man- 
hood during a country walk, are exceedingly characteristic : 




With happiness stretched across the hills 
In a cloud that dewy sweetness distills ; 
With a blue sky spread over with wings 
And a mild sun that mounts and sings ; 
With trees and fields full of fairy elves, 
And little devils who fight for themselves ; 
With angels planted in hawthorn bowers, 
And God himself in the passing hours ; 
With silver angels across my way, 

And golden demons that none can stay ; 


2GG 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


With my father hovering upon the wind, 

And my brother Robert just behind, — 

And my brother John, the evil one, 

In a black cloud making his moan ; 

With a thousand angels upon the wind 
Pouring disconsolate from behind 
To drive them oil,— and before my way 
A frowning thistle implores my stay . . • 

With my inward eye ’tis an old man grey ; 

With my outward, a thistle upon my way. 

This sounds like downright madness, but Blake was not 
mad in any ordinary sense of the term. With a metaphys- 
ical gift which made it natural for him to move in an ideal 
world, he combined a visual imagination of abnormal, al- 
most miraculous power, which enabled him to give bodily 
form to abstractions, and to summon at any moment before 
him “ armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that 
lurk.” Outwardly he led a regular, quiet, laborious life, 
all the while pouring out poems, drawings, and vast “ pro- 
phetical books ” full of shadowy mythologies and mystical 
thought-systems, which show that his inward life was one of 
perhaps unparalleled excitement and adventure. Leaving 
aside the prophetical books, which are too obscure to count 
for much in the history of literature, his fame as a poet 
rests chiefly on his Poetical Sketches, and on his Songs of 
Innocence and Experience. Amid much that is unfinished, 
and no little that is baffling to the intelligence, these little 
volumes contain some of the simplest and sweetest, as well 
as some of the most powerful short poems in the language. 
At his best, Blake has a simplicity as great as Wordsworth's, 
and a magic which reminds us of Coleridge, combined with 
a depth and pregnancy of meaning peculiar to himself. It 
must be admitted that he is at his best very rarely, and 
then, as it were, by accident. In him the whole tran- 
scendental side of the Romantic movement was expressed 
by hint and implication, though not by accomplishment. 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


267 

What Blake did toward reclaiming lost realms of the 
spirit and the imagination. Burns did, in more signal de- 
gree, toward reopening lost channels of feeling. 

He was born in a two-roomed clay cottage in Burns ’ 
Ayrshire, West Scotland, in 1759. His parents were God- 
fearing peasants of the best Scotch type, who worked hero- 
ically to keep the wolf from the door, and to give their 
children an elementary education. At fifteen Robert, the 
eldest, did a grown man’s work in ploughing and reaping. 
Looking back upon his youth in after years he described 
it as “ the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing 
toil of a galley slave.” But this is clearly an HigEarl Life 
exaggeration, if not a total misrepresentation ; and Poetry. e 
for we have his youthful poems to prove him wrong. The 
youth who wrote the “ Epistle to Davie,” with its manly 
philosophy and genial temper, the “ Address to, the Deil,” 
with its rich humor and fun, the “ Cotter’s Saturday 
Night,” bathed in its tender light of fireside happiness, 
was neither a hermit nor a galley-slave, but simply a 
healthy, impetuous farm-lad, with a warm heart, a rich 
nature, and a God-given genius for song. He had had a few 
books of poetry to read, and had heard, as every Scotch 
peasant hears, the floating ballad verse of the country- 
side. Then he had begun to rhyme, almost as sponta- 
neously as a bird begins to sing, or, as he says himself, “for 
fun.” Since he was a spontaneous, sincere, and absolute- 
ly original nature, the verses he strung together carelessly, 
as he followed his plough “ in glory and in joy, along the 
mountain-side,” were contributions to the world’s spir- 
itual experience ; and since he was also a born master of 
words, they were contributions to the world’s sum of 
beauty. 

Between his twenty-third and his twenty-sixth year. 
Burns wrote the larger portion of those poems which have 
made his name loved wherever the Lowland dialect is un- 
derstood. In these he revealed with wonderful complete- 


268 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ness the rural Scotland of his day, illuminated with a 
blended light of humor and tenderness the common ex- 
periences of his peasant world, not forbearing to treat its 
unedifying, and even its scandalous phases, with racy zest 
and laughing abandon. His large genial nature embraces 
everything human in the world about him. He celebrates 
“ Scotch Drink,” holds up to laughter the praying hypo- 
crite “ Holy Willie,” and paints the riotous games of 
Hallowe’en ; but he can turn immediately to mourn over 
the “wee, modest crimson-tipped flower” uprooted in the 
furrow on the mountain-side, and to find in a field-mouse 
whose snug home has been broken up by the ploughshare, 
a thing to touch the springs of human pity. 

By the time Burns had reached his twenty-sixth year, his 
wild ways had got him into desperate trouble ; his father 
was dead, and the hand-to-hand fight that he and his brother 
Gilbert were waging with poverty, bade fair to end in ab- 
solute failure. Distracted and despairing. Burns deter- 
mined to go to the West Indies. In order to raise the 
passage money, someone suggested that he should publish 
the poems which lay in his desk in the cottage at Mossgiel. 
This he did, his friends getting enough subscribers from 
among the local gentry to make the venture pay. Neither 
the author nor anyone else hoped for more than a local 
popularity. The little book was published at Kilmarnock 
in 1786, with the title. Poems , Chiefly in the Scottish 
Dialect . The few pounds brought in by the small edition 
were in his pocket, and his trunk was sent forward, when 
a letter from Edinburgh arrived which changed the whole 
face of his fortunes. It was from an eminent scholar and 
critic, who praised the book highly and called for another and 
a larger edition. Burns posted to Edinburgh, heralded and 
feted on the way like a hero of romance. A winter in the 
Scotch capital followed, during which the ploughman poet 
was petted and lionized ; and another winter during which 
his great friends cooled toward him as an exploited attrac* 


THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


269 


tion. Then he went back to Ayrshire, with an appointment 
as “ gauger ” (inspector of the liquor customs) in his pocket, 
married Jean Armour, and settled down to the _ , _ . _ 
task of combining farming and revenue ser- songs, 
vice with poetry. His duties as gauger covered ten par- 
ishes, and compelled him to ride two hundred miles a 
week ; what was worse, they threw him constantly into 
riotous company, where his wit and eloquence were always 
in uproarious demand. His farm naturally went to ruin, 
and he found time for little poetry except short snatches of 
song. With the exception of the “ Jolly Beggars” and 
the immortal “ Tam o’ Shanter,” Burns did no more sus- 
tained work. But in recompense he poured out hundreds 
of songs, — drinking songs, love songs, songs of patriotism, 
— some of which are among the eternal possessions of the 
race. Things went from bad to worse with him, and he 
died in 1796, at the age of thirty-seven, a self-defeated 
and embittered man. He saved others, himself he could 
not save. He poured into the world a current of feeling, 
electrical and life-giving. He revealed and made once 
more the heritage of all, the fountains of tenderness and 
passion, of natural tears and mirth ; fountains never sealed 
to the simple and lowly, who are always “ romantic,” in 
any age and under any fashion of thought. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY : THE TRIUMPH OF 
ROMANTICISM 

The “ Romantic Movement,” the beginnings of which have 
been traced in the preceding chapter, was by no means 
confined to literature. In England the religious revival 
under John Wesley, in Germany the new philosophy put 
forth by Emanuel Kant, in France the immense social up- 
heaval of the French Revolution, all were symptoms, early 
or late, of the same great influence working for liberation. 
When the movement, on its literary side, had become suf- 
The Romantic pronounced to be subject to definition, 

Movement a the essence of it was felt to be a “ return to 
* ‘ Return to 

Nature.” nature ; ” a welcoming back into life of all that 
was spontaneous and sincere ; a reassertion of the right of 
man to indulge all his spiritual instincts, even the wildest 
and most wayward. This reassertion naturally took two 
directions, one outward, toward whatever was remote and 
unusual, one inward, into the heart of common things, 
which, when looked at closely, were found to be full of 
new meanings. These two impulses found expression in 
the work of the two poets in whom the English romantic 
movement first became conscious of its real aims, Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. 

A happy chance brought these two poets together in the 
impressionable period of their young manhood, when 
Coleridge was twenty-five, and Wordsworth only two years 
older. Both had felt the storm and stress of the revolu- 
tionary age. Each brought to the other just that kind of 
stimulus needed to kindle his mind to creative activity ; 
and together, they gathered the diffused and uncertain 
rays of the new poetic illumination into an orb of steady 

270 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


271 


splendor. In them the new poetry first found an adequate 
and unmistakable voice ; and the little volume called Lyrical 
Ballads , which they published together in Double Aspect 
1798, shows the two impulses of the new menfinus-" 
poetry in full play. Coleridge’s contributions ridge d and Cole ’ 
treat mysterious, supernatural subjects in such Wordsworth - 
a way as to give to them an unparalleled illusion of reality; 
Wordsworth’s treat simple, everyday themes of nature/and 
human life in such a way as to reveal in them unsuspected 
elements of mystery and awe. wf 

Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary’s, Devonshire, in 
1772. He had a precocious boyhood as a “ blue-coat” at 
Christ’s Hospital, the famous charity school in London. 
While at Cambridge he plunged, with his friend EarlyLifeof 
Robert Southey, then a student at Oxford, into Coleridge, 
the generous enthusiasms aroused by the French Revolu- 
tion. After graduation the “two young idealists, in their ar- 
dor for social reform, conceived a grand scheme of ‘ 6 panti- 
socracy,” which they dreamed of realizing in the shape of a 
utopian community to be established across the ocean, on 
the banks of the Susquehanna. Preliminary to emigra- 
tion, Coleridge published a volume of juvenile verse, and 
married ; by 1797 he had a young family on his hands, and 
had exchanged pantisocracy for a tiny cottage in the vil- 
lage of Nether Stowey, in the Quantock hills. In 1797, 
Wordsworth, together with his wonderful sister Dorothy, 
moved to Alfoxden, in order to be near Coleridge, whom 
he had met the year before. To Wordsworth the compan- 
ionship meant much ; to Coleridge it meant everything. 
Under the bracing influence of Wordsworth’s hardy, origi- 
nal mind, supplemented by the quick sympathy and sug- 
gestiveness of Dorothy, Coleridge shot up suddenly into 
full poetic stature. In little more than a year (1797-1798) 
he wrote all his greatest poems, “ Genevieve,” “The 
Dark Ladie,” “ Kubla Khan,” “ The Ancient Mariner,” 
and the first part of “ Christabel.” 


272 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


The rest of Coleridge’s life, though he wrote a good deal 
of verse, has little importance in the history of poetry. 

He made a trip, in the Wordsworths’ company, 

His Later Life. ^ (j erman y ? and there became absorbed in the 

philosophy of Kant. So far as his later life had any defi- 
nite purpose, it was spent in interpreting the principles- of 
this philosophy to his countrymen. His bondage to the 
opium habit, added to an inherent weakness of will, made 
his life a heart-rending succession of half-attempts and 
whole failures. He planned many books, and partly exe- 
cuted a few ; but his chief influence was exerted in talk \ 
with his friends, and with those young men who, as his 
reputation for transcendental wisdom increased, resorted 
to him as to an oracle of hope and faith, in the years which 
followed the failure of the French Resolution. By consent 
of all who heard him Coleridge was one of the most won- 
derful talkers that ever lived. His verse, fragmentary and 
of small bulk though it is, gives him rank as one of the 
world’s great poets. 

As has been said above, Coleridge represents perfectly 
that side of the romantic imagination which seeks to lose 
Characteristics itself in dream and marvel ; to conjure up a 
Of his Poetry. wqM of pi ian tasmal scenery and of super- 
natural happenings, illuminated by “ a light that never 
was on land or sea.” “ Kubla Khan” paints an oriental 
dream-picture, as splendid and as impalpable as the palaces 
and plunging rivers and “ caverns measureless to man,” 
which we sometimes see lifted for a moment out of a stormy 
sunset. “ Christabel,” which seems in its fragmentary 
form to have been planned as the story of a young girl 
fallen under the spell of an unearthly demon in woman’s 
shape, moves in a mediaeval atmosphere blended of beauty 
and horror ; a horror poignantly vague, freezing the heart 
with its suggestion of all that is malign and cruel in 
the spirit world. “The Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge’s 
one finished masterpiece, stands almost alone in literature 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


273 


for the completeness with which it creates an illusion of 
reality while dealing with images and events manifestly 
unreal. Its great pictures of night and morning, of arc- 
tic and tropic seas ; its melodies of whispering keel and 
rustling sails, and of dead throats singing spectral carols ; 
its strange music, richer and more various even than that 
of “ Kubla Khan,” though not so grand and spacious,— 
these characteristics, to say nothing of the fruitful lesson 
lying at its heart, make the “ Ancient Mariner ” a poem 
with scarcely an equal in its kind. It is manifestly a 
dream, but a dream caught in a magic mirror, which holds 
it spellbound in immortal freshness. The “Ancient 
Mariner ” was Coleridge's chief contribution to Lyrical 
Ballads ; in itself it represented a whole domain splendidly 
conquered for the reawakened imaginations of men. 

William Wordsworth was born in 1770, at Cockermouth 

in Cumberland ; and he received his early education at the 

country grammar-school at Hawkshead, in the „ r 
t i • * , • „ TT . . , Wordsworth’s 

Lake region. After leaving the University ot Life. 

Cambridge in 1791, he spent two years in France, watch- 
ing with enthusiastic hope the middle stages of the French 
Revolution, and sharing in the ardent social enthusiasm 
which summed itself up in the motto of the revolutionists, 
“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” He was in Paris late in 
1792, before the awful excesses of the Reign of Terror be- 
gan ; and he was on the point of throwing in his lot with 
the revolutionists, when a stoppage of his funds com- 
pelled him to return to England. The later course of the 
Revolution induced in him a profound despondency and 
pessimism. During this critical period, he says, his sister 
Dorothy's influence kept alive the poet in him, by directing 
his mind toward the sources of permanent strength and joy, 
which lie in nature and in human sympathy : 

‘ ‘ She gave me eyes, she gave me ears ; 

And humble cares, and delicate fears ; 

A heart, the fountain of sweet tears, 

And love, and thought, and joy.” 


274 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Their residence at Alfoxden, with Coleridge, 1797-1798, 
marks the true beginning of Wordsworth's poetic career ; 
for up to this time, though he had written much, he had 
not found his genuine matter and manner. In “We are 
Seven/' “Expostulation and Reply," “Lines in Early 
Spring," “Tin tern Abbey," and other pieces written at 
this time, the true Wordsworth is apparent. During the 
winter in Germany which followed, he added to these 
pieces some of his most characteristic poems, such as 
“She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways," “Three Years 
She Grew in Sun and Shower," and “The Two April 
Mornings." On his return, he settled with his sister in a 
cottage at Grasmere, and in 1802 he married. At Gras- 
mere, and afterward at Rydal Mount at the other end of 
the lake, he lived for fifty years among the Cumberland 
dalesmen, leading an existence as pastoral and as frugal as 
theirs, reading little and meditating much, looking with 
deep unwearied delight upon the mountains and skies 
and waters which had fascinated him in boyhood, A 
small legacy from a friend, and later an appointment as 
distributor of stamps, made him independent, and left 
virtually his whole time free for the pursuit of poetry, 
which was for him as for Milton not only an art but a sol- 
emn ministry. The heights of his poetic achievement are 
marked successively by such pieces as “ Michael ".(1800) ; 
“ The Leech-Gatherer," the sonnets to Milton, to Tous- 
saint L'Ouverture, “It is a Beauteous Evening," and 
“ Westminster Bridge" (1802) ; “ The Solitary Reaper" and 
“Yarrow Unvisited" (1803) ; the “ O de to Duty, " “To a 
Skylark," and The Prelude (1805) ; “The World Is Too 
Much With Us," and The Ode on the Intimations of Im- 
mortality (1806) ; “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle" 
(1807), and The Excursion (1814). After this last date 
Wordsworth's genius gradually stiffened, and he produced 
little more poetry of the first order. This decline in poetic 
power in his later years, was accompanied by a reaction from 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


275 


the social and political radicalism of his youth, into a firm 
conservatism, which led him to uphold existing institu- 
tions of church and state, in the spirit of Burke. For many 
years his poetry met with neglect and ridicule, but he 
gradually drew to himself the attention and veneration of 
the best minds. The crowd turned aside to follow first 
Scott, then Byron, and then Tennyson ; but those whose 
suffrages were of most value rallied in increasing numbers 
about the “good old steel-gray figure” of the Cumberland 
poet ; and before his death in 1850, he enjoyed a late but 
sure renown. 

In Wordsworth the growing sensibility to natural phe- 
nomena, which we have traced from Thomson and Collins 
down to the end of the eighteenth century, reached its 
height. He was gifted by nature with an eye 

® ® J His Nature- 

and an ear marvellously sensitive to those slight Poetry: its 

, . . . . , . , , Sensitiveness. 

and elusive impressions which most persons 
pass by without noticing at all. This sensibility was in- 
creased by a long life spent in the country, in a region full 
of charm and even of grandeur ; and it was made efficacious 
by a remarkable serenity and patience, which enabled him 
to gather all the riches of the inanimate world, without 
haste and without disturbing excitement. Hence his poetry 
is full of exquisitely noted sights and sounds,— the shadow 
of the daisy on the s stone, the mist which follows the 
hare as she runs across a rain-drenched moor, the echo 
of the cuckoo's voice, the varying noise of waters, and the 
many voices of the wind. “To read one of his longer 
pastoral poems for the first time,” it has been said, “is like 
a day spent in a new country.” And all these sights and 
sounds are given with absolute truthfulness to ItsTruth 
the fact. There is no effect of heightening 
nature, of seeing her clothed^ in a light brighter or stranger 
than her own. Wordsworth writes “with his eye on the 
object,” content to portray what he sees. He learned from 
Burns that “verse can build a princely throne on humble 


276 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


truth and everywhere he gives an impression of un- 
questioning, reverent faithfulness to the fact wdiicli his 
senses have perceived. It follows that the greater part of 
his nature-studies are in a low key ; in the rareness of 
their grandeurs and glories, they breathe the modesty of 
nature. Especially noteworthy is the predominance in 
Wordsworth of broad elementary impressions, — 
its Breadth. mere d ar k ness a nd light, the silence of the sky, 

the moon “looking round her when the heavens are bare,” 
the twilight with its one star, the breathlessness of the even- 
ing sea, the lonesomeness of upland fields, the “sleep that 
is among the lonely hills.” It is the keenness of Words- 
worth’s sensibility to nature, and his quiet, religious ac- 
ceptance of her as she is, and his unwearied delight in her 
broadest and simplest phases, which together make him the 
first of her poets. 

\/ This same sobriety and truth of tone, this same reverent 
regard for the great commonplaces of life, characterize 
also Words worth’s treatment of human nature, 
of Human He deals with the broad elementary passions, 
the everyday affections, occupations, and duties, 
in a state of society where man is simplest and nearest 
to the soil. In many of his best poems, indeed, the 
human beings whom he pictures seem almost a part of the 
landscape, an emanation from nature herself, like the trees 
or the rocks. The figure of the Leech-gatherer on the 
moor seems as much a part of the natural landscape as the 
pool by which he stands ; the woman who speaks to the 
poet in “ Stepping Westward ” seems a part of the sunset, 
so blended is she with the scene ; in “ The 'Highland 
Reaper ” the singing of the girl comes out of the heart of 
the day, like the spirit of ancestral Scotland telling over its 
“ old unhappy far-off things, and battles long ago she is 
hardly more of a human personality than the cuckqo or 
the nightingale to which the poet compares her yvoice. 
Even when he looks closer at his human characters, and 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


277 


shows us their passions and the accidents of their life, they 
still partake of the simplicity and breadth of external 
nature, reminding us of the characters of Bible story or 
of the simple tragic figures of the French peasant painter 
Millet. The story of Margaret, in the first book of The 
Prelude , illustrates this, as does in a still better way 
“Michael,” the greatest example of Wordsworth's power 
to give to the simple tragedies of the peasant world a mon- 
umental impressiveness. He is the poet of human life in 
its lowest ‘terms, of that joy and sorrow which is “ in wid- 
est commonalty spread.” He looks to find the true signifi- 
cance of life on its lower levels, as did Crabbe ; but with 
far more sympathy, depth, and spiritual glow than Crabbe 
was able to bring to bear upon his subject. The best 
praise he can give his own wife is that she is a “ being 
breathing thoughtful breath,” in whose countenance meet 
sweet household records and promises. For Milton his 
best praise is that, although his “ soul was like a star and 
dwelt apart,” yet it laid upon itself “ the lowliest duties” 
along “life's common way.” With Wordsworth the doc- 
trine of simplicity was a thorough-going one, and entered 
into his entire conception not only of art but of life. 

Yet we should have but a very partial understanding of 
Wordsworth's personality and of his poetic meaning, if we 
stopped here. There was in him, besides the H isMysti- 

realist and the moralist, the mystic. Nature cism * 

is for him, even when he portrays her external aspect with 
the most naked truth, never merely a physical fact; nor 
has man, even when most blended in with her external 
features, merely a physical relation to her. On the con- 
trary, Nature is everywhere mystically transfused with 
spirit, and speaks mystically to the spirit in man, working 
upon him by the power of kinship and mutual understand- 
ing. Perhaps' the most complete expression of this aspect 
of his thought is “ Tintem Abbey,” which appeared in 
the Lyrical Ballads. “ Tintem Abbey” was written dur- 


278 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ing a walking tour which Wordsworth took in 1798, in 
company with his sister, through a country familiar to him 
“Tintern in earlier years. The well-remembered scenery 
Abbey.” 0 f ^he r j ver Wy e calls up before his musing 
thought the picture of his boyhood, with its passionate 
absorption in nature, when “ the sounding cataract haunted 
him like a passion,” and the rocks, the mountains, and the 
woods were to him “an appetite.” He shows how the 
influences of nature, acting upon the plastic soul of youth, 
bear fruit in later life, in “sensations sweet felt in the 
blood and felt along the heart,” and “ little nameless un- 
remembered acts of kindness and of love” ; and how they 
lift the spirit which remembers them, to 

that blessed mood 

In which the burden of the mystery, 

In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 
Is lightened . . . 

While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 

We see into the life of things. 

And he suggests a metaphysical explanation for this 
strange power which Nature has to soothe and ennoble 
the human soul, namely, that throughout Nature there 
is diffused the active spirit of God, living and working 
in her : — 

I have felt 

A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean, and the living air, 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 

A motion and a spirit, that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 

And rolls through all things. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


279 


“ Tin tern Abbey” gives us almost a complete “pro- 
gramme” of Wordsworth’s poetic career. In it we see 
marked out clearly the main paths which his mind fol- 
lowed during a long lifetime of lonely contemplation. In 
many noble poems he developed the three themes here 
given out : the eternal beauty of Nature, which waits 
everywhere about us “to haunt, to startle, and waylay” ; 
the power of that beauty to heal, gladden, and fortify 
whoever gives it welcome ; and the mystic source of this 
power, the spirit of God, hidden yet apparent in all the 
visible creation, building for itself a “ metropolitan tem- 
ple in the hearts ” of simple and unselfish men. Perhaps 
the most exquisite expression he has given to the idea of 
Nature’s formative power upon the soul, and through the 
soul upon the body of man, is the poem beginning “ Three 
Years She Grew in Sun and Shower.” 

The instinct to perceive nature and human life in tran- 
scendental terms, was very early manifested in Wordsworth. 
In his school-days at Hawkshead, the world 
would sometimes, he tells us, seem suddenly to physica^im- 
dissolve, and he would fall into an abyss of a s matlon - 
idealism from which he had to bring himself back to re- 
ality by grasping at the wall by the roadside, or by stooping 
to pick up a stone. This habit of mind, sobered and 
strengthened by reflection, pervades all his poetry, and 
gives to it a peculiarly stimulating character. In reading 
him, we never know when the actual landscape and the 
simple human story will widen out suddenly into some 
vaster theme, looking beyond space and time ; so that he 
awakens in us a kind of' spiritual apprehension or expec- 
tancy which forces us to look below the surface of his 
simplest poem, and to be on the alert for a meaning deeper 
than its primary one. His greatest poem, the , , Intimations 
“ Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” is also oummortai- 
the one in which the speculation is boldest. In 
this wonderful ode, which Emerson called “ the high-water 


280 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


mark of poetry in the nineteenth century/'’ the poet looks 
back with passionate regret to the lost radiance of his 
childhood, and tries to connect childhood reassuringly 
not only with manhood and old age, but also with a pre- 
vious existence, whence it brings its light of innocence and 
joy. The poem is a product of that majestic kind of met- 
aphysical imagination, which transcends space and time, 
and makes 

“ Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence.” 

In the Intimations and other poems mystically conceived, 
Wordsworth took the inheritance of the seventeenth cen- 
tury mystics, and of Blake, and gave it a clearer develop- 
ment, just as in his naturalistic poetry he carried to larger 
issues the work of Cowper, Crabbe, and Burns. 

The reader who approaches Wordsworth for the first 
time must be prepared for certain difficulties and even 
A disappointments. In the first place, his poetrv 

Difficulties in . r J 

Approaching is so devoid of artificial heightening that its in- 

tensity, its passion, its intimate truth, are apt 
to appeal slightly to a taste accustomed to more obvious 
excitement. In the second place, Wordsworth writes in 
two manners, one inspired, the other pedestrian ; and a 
very large body of his verse was the product of his pedes- 
trian mood. He seemed unable to distinguish in his work 
between the supreme and the commonplace. Another 
source of difficulty is his lack of humor, which sometimes 
led him, as in “ The Idiot Boy,” into manifest absurdity. 
In his search after the pathos of common life, and in his 
desire for rigorously simple language, he was not infre- 
quently betrayed into sheer prose. His nature was ex- 
tremely self-centred and dogmatic, and in ordinary moods 
it worked somewhat stiffly. But just in proportion to the 
amount of spiritual energy required to fuse this reluctant 
metal of his mind into a plastic and glowing state, is the 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



beauty and permanency of the product of his highest cre- 
ative moments ; so that his finest poems seem as little sub- 
ject to the touch of time, as immune from decay, as the 
mountains or the stars. 

It has long been traditional to associate with Wordsworth 
and Coleridge, to form the triad of “ Lake poets,” the name 
of Robert Southey, Coleridge’s colleague in the 
youthful scheme of pantisocracy. Southey was 
a man of amiable and nobly upright character, and of un- 
wearied industry ; he had a pure-hearted passion for litera- 
ture, and an unfaltering belief in his own poetic mission. 
He wrote several very long and ambitious romantic poems, 
of which The Curse of Kehama is perhaps the best ; and 
many prose works, among which his Life of Nelson holds 
a worthy place in literature as a model of succinct and vivid 
biography. Some of his short poems have an assured place 
with posterity, especially his verses “ To My Books,” in 
which his devotion to the literary life finds classic expres- 
sion. But his long poems have lost most of their interest, 
and he holds his place in the Lake triad less by poetic gift 
than by personal association. 

We have seen how the revolt against eighteenth century 
actuality and “common-sense,” found expression in the wild 
phantasmagories of Blake, and in the strange MainLine sof 
dream-world of Coleridge. We have seen likewise vo“|Smma- 
how the reaction from the rigid social aristocracy rized - 
of the eighteenth century, and from its contempt for the 
lowly aspects of human existence, led, through the harsh re- 
alism of Crabbe, to. Burns's passionate vindication of the 
primary instincts, and to Wordsworth's solemn revealment 
of the majesty of simple lives. We have seen, too, how the 
protest against eighteenth century “ urbanity " and absorp- 
tion in the life of the town, led, through Cowper's mild de- 
light in rural things, to the piercing tenderness of Burns's 
“Mountain Daisy,'' and to the mystical insight of Words- 
worth's “Tintern Abbey.” In like manner, the revulsion 


282 


A HISTORY OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 


from the Augustan indifference to the Middle Ages, led, 
through the forgeries of Chatterton and the epic chants of 
the pseudo-Ossian, to Scott, for whom it was reserved to 
create the life of the past on a vast scale, and with an 
unparalleled illusion of truth. 

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771 ; his father 
was a lawyer, but was descended from a vigorous and war- 
like Border clan. Scott developed early a passion for the bal- 
lad minstrelsy of his land ; and he spent many days of his 
youth roaming over the country, gathering ballads and 
scraps of ballads from the lips of Lowland peasants. His 
Scott’s career c °ll ect i° n was published under the title Border 
as a Poet. Minstrelsy. Except for a few ballads in the 
“grewsome” vein made popular by the “Lenore” of 
Burger, the pioneer of German romanticism, Scott wrote 
no original poetry until his thirty-fourth year. In 1805 
appeared The Lay of tlie Last Minstrel, in which a thread 
of “gothic ” supernaturalism is woven into a tale of Scotch 
border life in the Middle Ages. This was followed in 1808 
by Marmion. Marmion exhibited in much greater meas- 
ure the brilliant descriptive color, the swift and powerful 
narrative movement, and the ringing, energetic music, 
which had made the Lay instantly popular ; and it showed 
a great advance over the earlier poem in life-likeness and 
breadth. Scarcely more than a year later appeared The 
Lady of the Lake, a story softer and more idyllic than 
Marmion, yet not lacking in wild and stirring episodes ; 
in it Scott came far nearer than he had done in his earlier 
poems, to the broad imaginative handling of mediaeval 
Scotch life which he afterward gave in his prose romances. 

These three poems, presenting many of the new roman- 
tic motives in popularly attractive form, took the reading 
Qualities of wor ^ by storm. The diction employed in them 
his Poetry. was not, like the language of Coleridge and 
Wordsworth, so startlingly novel as a literary medium that 
it repelled the unaccustomed ear. The metre was strong and 


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283 


buoyant, appealing powerfully to a public weary of the mo- 
notonous couplets of the preceding age, but unable to appre- 
ciate the delicate melodies of the Songs of Innocence and Ex- 
perience and the Lyrical Ballads. The romantic scenery, 
brightly and firmly painted, but always kept subordinate 
to the action ; the character delineation, picturesque but 
not subtle ; and the vigorous sweep of the story, — all ap- 
pealed to the popular heart. Scott himself described the 
peculiar excellence of his poetry truly enough, though with 
characteristic modesty, as consisting in a “ hurried frank- 
ness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, and 
young people of bold and active disposition.” 

Scott’s metrical tales did much to popularize romanti- 
cism in its broader phases. He was, however, not much 
in earnest as a poet ; and when the public turned to the 
more lurid and extravagant verse-tales of Byron, Scott 
cheerfully resigned his place to the younger man, and be- 
gan his far greater work in prose (see page 357). 

The popular triumph of romanticism was also aided by 
another Scotch poet, Thomas Campbell (1777-1844). He 

began his career as a follower of the Augustans, 

5 , 6 Campbell, 

and was known during Ins university career as 

the “ Pope of Glasgow.” In Germany, where he went in 
1799, he fell under the influence of Burger and the other 
early German romanticists ; and in 1803 he published a vol- 
ume of poems in the new manner, among which “ Lochiel,” 
“ Hohenlinden,” and “ The Exile of Erin,” attained and 
have held a great popular esteem. Afterward he pub- 
lished his famous war-odes, “ The Battle of the Baltic” 
and “Ye Mariners of England.” These splendid battle- 
chants, full of martial energy and kindling enthusiasm, 
rank with the best war-poetry of England, and are worthy 
of the race which holds the dominion of the sea. 

The group of poets who came to manhood when the 
French Revolution was at its height, reacted during the 
Napoleonic wars into settled conservatism. Scott, in- 


284 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


deed, by the accident of his early surroundings, was con- 
servative from the first. Southey and Coleridge, after their 
youthful enthusiasm for a new utopian scheme 
of scott and of society, took refuge, the one in political 
the Lake Poets. rp or yj sm ^ t} ie other in the mystical pedantries 

of German philosophy. Wordsworth, who had felt the 
storm and stress of revolutionary ideas more than any of 
the others, after a long period of wavering and disappoint- 
ment finally intrenched himself behind the institutions of 
church and state as he found them, and in that safe posi- 
tion proceeded with his real task of discovering new sources 
of joy and power for the individual life, in love of nature 
and - in moral conduct. The two poets whom 
Byron and we now approach, Byron and Shelley, took up 
the torch of revolution which had been kindled 
in France during their childhood, and carried it flaming 
into new regions of thought and feeling.'V^ 

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in 1788, of a fam- 
ily of noblemen notorious for their pride and their passion- 
ate temper. He was of extraordinary physical 
Lvfe°and beauty, and a lameness of one foot added to 
this a touch of pathos. Personal fascination 
was his from the first. He mastered his little world of 
school-fellows at Harrow with the same enthralling power 
of personality which later took captive the imagination of 
Europe. His first volume of poems, Hours of Idleness 
(1807), was faithful to the school of Pope, a poet for whom 
Byron throughout his life professed an unswerving admi- 
ration. The immature little book was mercilessly ridi- 
culed in the Edinburgh Review. Byron nursed his re- 
venge, and in 1809 he published a vigorous satiric onslaught 
upon his critics, entitled English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers. It is significant that his first signal perform- 
ance should have been conceived in a satiric vein, and 
educed by a blow to his personal pride. 

.Two years later the young poet set off upon his travels. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


285 


Not content with the conventional “ grand tour,” he 
pushed on into Albania, Greece, and the islands of the 
iEgean ; dining in the tents of robber chieftains, rescuing 
distressed beauties from death at the hand of harem slaves, 
and doing many other romantic things. The public, at 
any rate, was eager to ascribe all these adventures to 
him, incited thereto by the lurid verse-romances. The 
Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814), and others, which he 
now poured out with prodigal swiftness. These Eastern 
tales, cruder and melodramatic as they were, appealed enor- 
mously to the popular taste, and quite eclipsed Scott’s 
saner and healthier muse. 

Byron’s return to England and his marriage were quickly 
followed by a separation from his wife and by his final de- 
parture from his native country. The next years he spent 
in Switzerland and Italy, part of the time in company with 
Shelley. To this period belong his most important works, 
the later cantos of Childe Harold (1816-1818), the dramas 
Manfred (1817) and Cain (1821), and his satiric master- 
piece, Don Juan (1819-1824). The romance of his life was 
crowned by a romantic and generous death. In 1824 he 
went to Greece, to put himself at the head of the revolu- 
tionary forces gathered to liberate that country from the 
tyranny of the Sultan. He was seized with fever in the 
swamps of Missolonghi, and died before he had had time 
to prove his ability as a leader. 

In his Eastern tales and his dramas, Byron presents un- 
der many names one hero — himself, or rather an exagger- 
ated shadow of orfe side of himself. The Con- The East _ 
rads and Laras of the tales are all proud and ern Tales - 
lonely souls in revolt ; mysteriously wicked, infernally 
proud, quixotically generous, and above all melancholy. 
In Manfred and Cain these crude outlines became impos- 
ing silhouettes, thrown out sharply against a background 
half-real and half-supernatural. The scene of Manfred is 
laid in the high Alps, where the hero lives in his castle in 


286 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


gloomy and bitter isolation, communing with unearthly 
powers, and scornfully working out his dark fate. Cain , 
The Dramas : though imperfectly carried out, is superbly con- 
f?r a t S h5r ceived. The earthly rebel and first shedder of 
popularity, human blood, under the guidance of Lucifer, 
the rebel angel, visits Hell and Chaos, and there finds 
grounds for the godless hatred that is in him. It was by 
these plays, from one point of view truly terrible, that 
Byron earned his title as founder and chief exemplar of the 
“ Satanic school ” of poetry. They are perhaps the most 
uncompromising expression of individualism, and the most 
thorough-going negation of the social ideal, to be found in 
our literature. Their popularity, which was instant and 
enormous, was largely due to historical causes. The French 
Revolution, the most daring reach which the human race 
has ever made after an ideal social state, had failed. Eu- 
rope, under the rule of Metternich, had swung back from 
its eager dreams of freedom and fraternity into a gloomy 
mood, in which the still potent spirit of rebellion became 
personal, self-centred, and anti-social. Byron represented 
and justified to the European mind this recoil, and Byron- 
ism became a passion, a disease. 

Cliilde Harold presents the Byronic hero in a more 
elegiac mood, as a pensive wanderer through Europe and 
_ , the East. It is not until the later cantos that 

Byron as a 

Poet r,i ^^chiide ^ ® verse r ^ ses rea ^ magnificence. Among 

Harold.” the lakes and mountain solitudes of Switzer- 
land, the decaying glories of Venice, and the imperial 
ruins of Rome, the poet’s imagination is genuinely kin- 
dled, and the passages which celebrate these scenes are 
among the triumphs of descriptive poetry in our lan- 
guage. Byron paints his pictures in free, bold strokes, 
and with a pomp of rhetoric well suited to his grandiose 
subjects. He makes up in broad impressiveness what he 
lacks in subtlety. His music, too, is loud and sonorous ; 
without the heartfelt, searching beauty of greater melodists, 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


287 


but with an orchestral sweep and volume appropriate to 
the theme. 

In Don Juan, however, Byron first found his gen- 
uine voice, and it proved to be neither dramatic nor lyric, 
but satiric. Don Juan is a comprehensive 

. Byron as a 

satire upon modern society. The hero is a satirist: 

a •/ i i pQjj Juan * * 

Castilian youth, a light-hearted, irresponsible 
pagan creature, who wanders through Turkey, Russia, and 
England, meeting all sorts of adventures, particularly such 
as are calculated to shock the moral sense, and to exhibit 
the social corruption hidden under the conventional veneer. 
The poem was, in effect, a long peal of scornful laughter 
flung at British cant, at that famous British cant which 
Byron declared was in his day the “primum mobile” of 
his countrymen’s life, both national and private. In his 
more serious work, Byron is fatally subject to anticlimax. 
His imagination and his power of phrase are apt to fail 
him just when they are needed most. In Don Juan he 
turned this defect into a piquant virtue, by deliberately 
cultivating anti-climax for satiric ends. He drops with 
startling suddenness from the serious to the trivial, from 
impassioned poetry to mocking prose. The device is 
a simple one, but Byron uses it with a variety and 
zest truly wonderful, and secures by means of it an 
effect of cynical nonchalance which is a triumph of its 
kind. 

Byron’s was a personality of immense force. To his age 
he was a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, but 
one which led only into deeper deserts of unfaith and 
negation. Such work as he had to do was a work of 
destruction ; the age cried out for it, and he did it thor- 
oughly. Of the higher powers of poetry he possessed 
few, and for them he cared little. He was a careless and 
hasty worker. In His own words, if he missed his first 
spring he went growling back to his jungle. That he 
was a great writer, one of the greatest, is as certain as 


288 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


that neither by the soul nor the body of his art can he take 
rank with the small company of supreme poets. 

Among that company, a presence so bright and strange 
as to seem in truth one of those “spirits from beyond the 
moon ” of whom he sang, Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Shelley’s Life , „ \ ^ ' . , u J 

and Poetic holds a place. He was born m 1792, just when 
Development. e y es 0 f a p Europe were fixed in hope, and 

fear upon France, and the stars fought in their courses for 
the triumph of a new order. At Eton, among the tyrannies 
and conventions of a great public school, his sensitive 
nature was thrown into a fever of rebellion from which he 
never quite worked out into spiritual sanity and health. 
“Mad Shelley,” his schoolmates called him, and in the 
judgment of the world he remained “mad Shelley” to the 
end of his life. At Oxford, whither he proceeded hi 1810, 
he read the sceptical French philosophers, and deemed it 
his duty to publish his religious views in a pamphlet en- 
titled “ The Necessity of Atheism,” for which he-was ex- 
pelled. An ill-starred marriage with Harriet Westbrook 
followed, and after that came a quixotic attempt to arouse 
Ireland to seek redress for her national wrongs. The young 
couple carried on their mission by throwing from the 
windows of their lodging in Dublin, copies of Shelley’s 
Address to the Irish People , “ to every passer-by who 
seemed likely.” They continued the campaign later in 
Wales, by setting tracts adrift in the sea in sealed bottles, 
or sending them down the wind in little fire-balloons. 
The curious mixture in Shelley of the real and the unreal 
is sharply brought out by the fact that the writings 
thus fantastically put in circulation are often of grave and 
simple eloquence, wise in counsel and temperate in tone, 
and that most of the reforms which they advocate have 
since been enacted into law. 

An acquaintance with William Godwin, the revolution- 
ary philosopher and novelist, author of Political Justice 
and Caleb Williams, led Shelley to write Queen Mah, a 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


289 


crude poem attacking dogmatic religion and tlie social 
state. The scandal which it created was soon increased 
by Shelley’s separation from Harriet Westbrook, his al- 
liance with Godwin’s daughter Mary, and the departure 
of the couple from England into lasting exile. Before this, 
in 1816, he had produced “Alastor,”a blank verse narrative 
full of wonderful dream-pictures of earth and sea and sky, 
written in pulsing and sweeping rhythms. “Alastor” 
showed that Shelley had passed his apprenticeship and had 
become. a master in his art. In Italy, his powers developed 
rapidly. At Rome, amid the tangle of flowers and vines 
which at that time covered the mountainous ruins of the 
Baths of Caracalla, he wrote his lyrical drama, Prometheus 
Unbound . The same year (1819) he finished The Cenex, a 
drama intended for the stage, and written in much more 
simple and everyday language than his other works. The 
short remainder of his life is marked by many great poems, 
some of considerable length, like the “ Sensitive Plant ” 
and “ Adonais” ; others shorter, among them the wonder- 
ful <f Ode to the West Wind,” and the best known of all 
Shelley’s lyrics, the “ Skylark.” In 1821 the poet was 
drowned, while sailing off Leghorn, in one of those swift 
storms which sweep the Mediterranean during the summer 
heats. His body was burned on the beach, and his ashes 
were placed in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near the 
grave where, a few months before, Keats had been laid. 

Shelley’s most characteristic work, both in thought and 
style, is Prometheus Unbound. The subject was sug- 
gested by a lost drama of ^Eschylus, in which 
Prometheus, the heroic friend and lover of oiaracteristic 
mankind, was unchained from a bleak precipice metheus un- 
where the tyrant Zeus had hung him. In Shel- 
ley’s treatment Prometheus represents, not a superhuman 
helper of mankind, but Mankind itself, heroic, just, 
gentle, sacredly thirsting after liberty and spiritual glad- 
ness, but chained and tortured by the ruler of Heaven. 


V 


290 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


111 the fulness of time Demogorgon (Necessity) hurls the 
tyrant from his throne ; and Prometheus, amid the songs 
of Earth and the Moon, is united to Asia, the spirit of 
love in Nature. Here as elsewhere, Shelley shows himself 
a child of the French Revolution, in believing that it is 
only some external tyranny, — the might of' priests and 
kings, the weight of “ custom," the dark dreams of super- 
stition, — which keeps mankind from rising to his ideal 
stature. But if the philosophy of Prometheus is imma- 
ture, and tinged with the popular misconceptions of the 
time, the nobility of its mood, the heroic enthusiasm 
which it voices, make it eternally inspiring. And for its 
spirit of sacred passion the verse of the poem is a glorious 
vesture. The unearthly beauty of its imagery, the keen 
ethereal music of its songs and choruses, make this not 
only Shelley’s highest achievement, but a fixed star in the 
firmament of poetry. 

It is in its lyrics that Prometheus reaches its greatest 
altitudes, for Shelley’s genius was essentially lyrical. In 
His Lyrical all his best songs and odes, the words seem to 
Genius. move( j j n to their places in response to some 

hidden tune, wayward and strange in its movement, but 
always rounding into a perfect whole. Such a poem as 
that beginning “ Swiftly walk over the western wave ” 
marks perhaps the extreme limit of the romantic diver- 
gence from eighteenth century strictness of form ; but it 
obeys a higher law than that of regularity, and with all 
its waywardness it is as perfect in shape as a flower. The 
rhythmical structure of the “West Wind” should be 
studied as a typical example of Shelley’s power to make 
the movement of verse embody its mood. In this ode, the 
impetuous sweep and tireless overflow of the terza rima * 
ending after each twelfth line in a couplet, suggests 'with 
wonderful truth the streaming and volleying of the wind, 
interrupted now and then by a sudden lull. Likewise in 
* Ten-syllable lines rhyming a b a, c b c, d c d, etc. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


291 


the “ Skylark,” the fluttering lift of the bird's movement, 
the airy ecstasy and rippling gush of its song, are mirrored 
in the rhythm, in a thousand subtly varying effects. 

Another main peculiarity of Shelley as a poet is what 
may be called his “ myth-making ” power. His poetry is 
full of “personifications” which, although in 
origin not different from those which fill eigh- making*^ 1 *" 
teenth century poetry with dead abstractions 
like “smiling Hope” and “ruddy Cheer,” are imagined 
with such power that they become real spiritual presences, 
inspiring wonder and awe. Such are the “ Spirits of the 
Hours ” in Prometheus , such is the spirit of the west-wind 
in the ode just mentioned, the latter a sublime piece of 
myth-making. It is in “ Adonais,” however, that this 
quality is perhaps best exhibited. To mourn over the dead 
body of Keats, in whose memory the elegy was written, 
there gather Splendors and Glooms, grief-clad Morning 
and wailing Spring, desolate Hours, winged Persuasions 
and veiled Destinies, and the lovely dreams which were the 
exhalation of the poet's spirit, in life. It would be hard to 
find a more signal instance than these “personifications” 
afford, of the way in which a great poet can revivify an out- 
worn and discredited poetic tradition. The elegy is of all 
Shelley's poems the one which would most have satisfied 
Keats's own jealous artistic sense. It is to be grouped with 
Milton's Lycidas, Tennyson's In Memoriam , and Arnold's 
Thyrsis as one of the four supreme threnodies * in English 
verse. 

Shelley deals less with actualities than does any other 
English poet. His imagery is that of a dream world, peopled 
by ethereal formsand bathed in prismatic light. His“Unre- 
Even when he borrows imagery from nature, it allty '” 
is from a nature heightened and rarefied by passage through 
his own temperament. He is at the other pole from 

* Threnody, from two Greek words signifying “ tear ” and u song,” 
i.e . , a song of grief for the dead. 


292 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Wordsworth’s homeliness and large acceptance of Nature as 
she is. Hence an air of unreality rests over all Shelley’s 
work, an unreality made more conspicuous by his unprac- 
tical theories of conduct and of society. Matthew Arnold 
called him “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in 
the void his luminous wings in vain.” But beauty such as 
Shelley’s verse embodies cannot be ineffectual ; and his 
passionate plea for freedom, for justice, and for loving- 
kindness, has never ceased to be potent in the deepening 
earnestness of this century’s search after social betterment. 

One effect of the revolutionary excitement of the age, 
and of the political agitation which it engendered, was to 
revive the sentiment of nationality, which had 
tionai Senti- lost during the eighteenth century the lyric 
ardor given to it during the reign of Elizabeth. 
In Wordsworth’s sonnets on national crises during the 
Napoleonic wars, and in Campbell’s odes, this new national 
sentiment was expressed for England. In Scott’s poems 
and novels it was expressed — in a broader, less political 
way — for Scotland. Ireland found a champion for her im- 
memorial wrongs, and a reflection of her national peculiar- 
Moore ities of temperament, in Thomas Moore (1779- 

1852), the biographer and intimate friend of 
Byron. Moore’s Irish Melodies , of which, beginning in 
1807, he wrote an immense number, include a score or so 
really beautiful lyrics, where the bright fancy and vague 
elusive melancholy of the Celtic nature find fit expression. 
Like the Elizabethan lyrists, Moore wrote for music, much 
of it of his own composing. His oriental tales, of which 
Lalla RooTch (1817) is the best known, are as artificial in 
their candied sweetness and tinsel decoration, as the Irish 
Melodies are, when at their best, genuine. 

A link between the revolutionary poets, deeply imbued 
with the agitation of their time, and Keats, in whose work 
the “ time-spirit ” counts for almost nothing, is furnished 
by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). He was intimate with both 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


293 


Byron and Shelley, and shared their radicalism. In 1812 
he was imprisoned for criticising the Prince Regent; 
and during his imprisonment he made an ex- 
haustive study of the Italian poets, especially Leish Hunt ’ 
Ariosto; the chief fruit of this study in his own work 
was a narrative poem entitled “ Francesca da Rimini,” 
suggested by Dante’s account of the lovers Paolo and Fran- 
cesca, in his Inferno . Leigh Hunt’s poem influenced 
both Shelley and Keats, the former in “ Julian and Mad- 
dalo,” the latter in “ Lamia.” Hunt wrote a vast amount 
of critical and miscellaneous prose, among which his es- 
says upon actors and acting are of especial interest. At 
least one of his shorter poems, “ Abou Ben Adhem,” has 
remained popular. 

It was through Leigh Hunt that Keats, his friend and 
for a time his disciple, was led to the study of the Italians, 
from whom he derived, as Chaucer, Spenser, Romant ic 
and Milton had done before him, a richness of “ < se C l ?Sd t Re- 
tone and a glow of color that he could hardly naissance -” 
otherwise have attained. The Romantic movement has 
been called a “ second Renaissance and it is a striking 
fact that the two great sources of literary inspiration in the 
Renaissance, classical and Italian poetry, furnished to the 
later group of romantic poets invaluable aid. Byron and 
Shelley did their best work under Italian stimulus, sup. 
plemented in Shelley’s case by the influence of Plato and 
the Greek dramatists. Keats formed his manner in the 
first place upon the Italian poets, and upon their greatest 
English imitator, Spenser ; and in the old Greek myths 
he found the chief food for his imagination. Later, he 
supplemented his training with a study of the Elizabethan 
dramatists and of Milton, in all of whom the Italian element 
is strong. 

John Keats was born in 1795, the son of a livery-stable 
keeper. He was apprenticed at fifteen to learn surgery, but 
he broke his indentures, and after walking the hospitals in 


294 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


London for a time, he gave up the medical profession. The 
passion for poetry, which was to be, during the brief remain- 
der of his life, a consuming ardor, had already 
Life and Poetic been kindled in him. Leigh Hunt introduced 
Development. to a literary circle where his dawning 

talents found encouragement. In 1817 he published a little 
volume of verse, most of it crude and immature enough, 
but showing in many places a nascent mastery of style, 
and containing the magnificent sonnet “ On First Look- 
ing into Chapman’s Homer,” perhaps Keats’s most perfect 
achievement in the sonnet form. From the first, his imag- 
ination had turned to the old Greek world with instinctive 
sympathy ; and he now chose as the subject for a long nar- 
rative poem the story of Endymion, the Latmian shepherd 
beloved by the moon-goddess. Endymion was published 
in 1818. The exordium of the poem, the Hymn to Pan in 
the opening episode, and a myriad other lines and short 
passages, are worthy of the Keats that was to be ; but as a 
whole Endymion is chaotic, and cloyed with ornament. 
Nobody knew this better than Keats himself, as is testi- 
fied to both by his letters and by the proudly humble pref- 
ace in which he describes the poem as a “ feverish at- 
tempt rather than a deed accomplished,” and hopes that 
“ while it is dwindling I may be plotting and fitting my- 
self for verses fit to live.” 

To what purpose he plotted, the wonderful volume pub- 
lished two years later, in 1820, shows. It was entitled 
Lamia , Isabella , The Eve of St. Agnes , and other Poe7ns ; 
besides the pieces named, it contained the great odes, “ On 
Melancholy,” “On a Grecian Urn,” “ To Psyche,” and 
“ To a Nightingale,” and the heroic fragment, “ Hype- 
rion.” Two years had done wonders in deepening and 
strengthening his gift. In turning from Spenser and 
Ariosto to the great masculine poets of the seventeenth 
century, Shakespeare, Webster, Milton, and Dry den, he 
had found the iron which was lacking in his earlier intel- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


295 


lectual food, and had learned the lessons of artistic calm- 
ness and severity, without sacrifice of the mellow sweetness 
native to him ; to charm he had added strength. 

Before the 1820 volume was published, Keats was at- 
tacked by consumption, and had warning that another win- 
ter in England would prove fatal. In September of that 
year he sailed for Italy under the care of his faithful 
friend Joseph Severn. Early in the spring of 1821 he died 
in Rome, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery by 
the Aurelian wall, where Shelley, also, was soon to be laid. 
On his tomb are carved, according to his own request, the 
words, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” In 
a hopefuller time and in a mood of noble simplicity, he 
had said, “ I think I shall be among the English poets 
after my death.” 

The essential quality of Keats as a poet is his sensitive- 
ness to beauty, and the singleness of aim with which he 
seeks for “the principle of beauty in all things.” He wor- 
ships beauty for beauty’s sake, with none of the HisWorship 
secondary moral intentions of Milton, Words- of Beauty, 
worth, and Shelley, but with the unreasoning rapture of a 
lover or a devotee. In his first volume he tells of the 
“ dizzy pain ” which the sight of the Elgin marbles gave 
him, of the “indescribable feud” wdiich they “brought 
round his heart.” He opens his second volume with the 
memorable line, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever ;” and 
in his last volume, at the close of the ode “ On a Grecian 
Urn,” he declares that beauty is one with truth. In this 
last instance he attempts for once to rationalize his in- 
stinctive devotion ; but it is as an overmastering instinct, 
not as a philosophic conception, that we find the worship 
of beauty everywhere operative in his work. 

It is this passion for beauty, working through an aes- 
thetic organism of extraordinary delicacy and power, which 
gives to Keats’s poetry its sensuous richness, a^nd w T hich 
makes it play magically upon all the senses of the reader. 


296 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


The pure glow of his color reminds us of the Italian 
painter Giorgione ; and the music of his best verse has a 
, wonderful mellowness and depth, as if blown 
his Poetry. softly through golden trumpets. In the early 
poems the richness is indeed too great, the ornament exces- 
sive ; but this is merely the eager lavishness of youth re- 
joicing in its abundance, and not yet disciplined into good 
taste. From the first, his poetry has extraordinary fresh- 
ness, energy, gusto. His use of words is, even in his earliest 
volume, wonderfully fresh. He revived old words, coined 
new ones, and put current ones to a new service, with a 
confidence and success unequalled by any other English 
poets except Chaucer, Shakespeare, and perhaps Spenser. 

The sense of form, which is so conspicuous in Keats’s 
later work, was a matter of growth with him. Endymion 
is formless, a labyrinth of flowery paths which lead no- 
where. But the great odes, especially the “ Nightingale” 
and the “ Grecian Urn,” and the later narrative poems, 
His sense of the “ Eve of St. Agnes ” and “ Lamia,” have a 
Form. wonderful perfection of form, a subordination 

of part to part in the building up of a beautiful whole, 
which is the sign of the master-workman. This is particu- 
larly true of “ St. Agnes’ Eve,” that latest and perhaps most 
perfect flowering of the old Spenserian tree. The story of 
Madeline’s dream on the haunted eve, of its magical fulfil- 
ment through young Porphyro’s coming, and of their flight 
from the castle, is set in a framework of storm and cold, 
of dreary penance and spectral old age, of barbarous rev- 
elry and rude primeval passion, which by a series of subtle 
and thrilling contrasts marvellously heightens the warm 
and tender radiance of the central picture ; then, when the 
illusion of reality is at the height, the whole thing is 
thrown back into the dim and doubtful past by the words 

And they are gone ; ay, ages long ago 

These lovers fled away into the storm. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


297 


Keats’s strength, which we see in “ The Eve of St 
Agnes,” “ Lamia,” and the Odes, working in the service of 
perfect grace, tempted him in “ Hyperion ” to attack a 
theme of the largest epic dimensions, the overthrow of the 
old Titan sun-deity Hyperion, by the new sun-god Apollo. 
The subject proved too large for his undeveloped powers, and 
he threw it aside, on the ground that there were “ too many 
Miltonic inversions in it.” Probably the deeper reason was 
that he felt as yet unequal to the task of imposing form 
upon his stupendous matter, and his artistic sense would 
no longer permit him to be content with formlessness. As 
the poem stands it is a superb fragment, an august portal 
to a temple which will never be built. 

Although the body of Keats’s work lies remote from 
everyday human interest, it is a serious mistake to think of 
him as indifferent to human affairs, or in any His 
sense effeminate. His wonderful letters, with Humanity, 
their rollicking fun, their quick human sympathy and so- 
licitude, their eager ponderings upon life and clear in- 
sight into many of its dark places, show a nature vitalized 
at every point, and keenly alert to reality. Through many 
of his later poems, especially the great odes, breathes a poig- 
nant human undertone, which suggests that if he had 
lived he might have turned more and more to themes of 
common human experience. Dying as he did at twenty- 
five, after only three or four years of opportunity, he yet 
left behind him a body of poetry which is in its kind un- 
excelled, and which has had a more profound influence 
than any other upon subsequent verse. From 
the youthful work of Tennyson and Browning Hls Influence - 
down to the present day, the poetry of the Victorian age 
has been deeply affected in form and color by Keats’s fas- 
cinating example. 

His importance in the romantic development which we 
have been tracing is twofold. In the first place, no one 
in the line of his predecessors had been endowed as was 


298 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


he to taste of all earthly delights, to “ burst joy’s grape 
against his palate fine”; and to convey into verse the 
wealth of his sensations. By describing life as 
the Romantic it came to him through his temperament, a 
Movement. temperament most rich and delicate yet most 
robust, he greatly widened the sensuous realm of poetry. 
In the second place he greatly enriched the texture of 
verse — its diction and melody — by importing into it new 
elements from Italian and Elizabethan poetry. In reclaim- 
ing the lost secrets of Renaissance verse, he did consum- 
mately what Thomsoi^Collins, Gray, and Blake had done 
falteringly. v 

The Elizabethan revival, of which the poetic results are 
seen in Keats, was in large part due to a group of prose- 
writers who carried over into the realm of crit- 
RomantTc icism the wider sympathies, both literary and 
criticism. human, accompanying the romantic movement. 
Coleridge, after his power as a poet was gone, contributed 
much, in his Biograpliia Literaria and in his lectures on 
Shakespeare, to broaden the basis of criticism, and to 
substitute for the narrow canons of Dr. Johnson and 
the eighteenth century literary doctrinaires, a more hu- 
mane and sympathetic appreciation. Leigh Hunt wrote 
voluminously for more than thirty years with the same 
end in view. William Hazlitt (1778-1830), in 
a series of brilliant essays and lectures, illus- 
trated the new impulse to regard literature from the 
romantic point of view, to approach it with personal en- 
thusiasm and with hospitality to widely different types of 
genius. Hazlitt humanized literary criticism by infusing 
into it an autobiographic element ; by making it, in other 
words, a kind of romance of adventure in the world 
of books. He also connected it with the criticism of 
life and manners, and with the larger questions of philos- 
ophy, in a way which has been fruitful of suggestion to 
later critics. The romantic quality of Hazlitt’s style may 


Hazlitt. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


299 


be illustrated by a bit of eulogy which occurs in his Lect- 
ures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. Of Sir 
Thomas Browne's imagination he says : — “He turns the 
world round for his amusement, as if if were a globe of 
pasteboard. The orbits of the heavenly bodies or the his- 
tory of empires are to him but a point in time or a speck 
in the universe. . . He scoops an antithesis out of fabu- 

lous antiquity, and rakes up an epithet from the sweepings 
of chaos. . . The categories * hang about his neck like 

the gold chain of knighthood, and he walks gowned in the 
intricate folds and swelling draperies of dark sayings and 
impenetrable riddles." 

Besides Hazlitt, the leading exponents of the romantic 
school of criticism were Charles Lamb and Thomas He 
Quincey. Lamb was a pioneer in the Elizabethan revival, 
and He Quincey was one of the earliest champions of the 
Lake school of poetry. Both of these writers united the 
criticism of literature with the criticism of life, and it is in 
the latter province that their most important work was 
done. 

Charles Lamb was born m London m 1775, and was 
brought up within the precincts of the ancient law-courts, 
his father being a servant to an advocate of the 
Inner Temple. From the cloisters of the Tem- 
ple he was sent to the cloisters of Christ's Hospital, where 
he had for a classmate Coleridge, his lifelong friend. f At 
seventeen he became a clerk in the India House, and here 
he spent the working hours of the next thirty- three years, 
until he was retired on a pension in 18254 His lifelong 
devotion to his sister Mary, upon whom rested an hered- 
itary taint of insanity, has done almost as much as the 

* Space, Time, etc., are known in philosophy as the “categories” 
of thought. 

f See Lamb's “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital ” and “ Christ’s 
Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago,” in the Essays of Elia. 

X See Elia Essay, The Superannuated Man. 


300 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


sweetness and gentle humor of his writings to endear his 
name. He died in 1834, his sister outliving him and 
gradually sinking into that mental darkness from which 
his patience and tenderness had upheld her. 

Lamb’s first successful literary venture was his Tales 
from Shakespeare (1807), written in collaboration wkh his 
His Literary sister, an( i intended for children. The fineness 
Criticism. 0 f Lamb’s critical gift, which was at least 
suggested in these rewordings of Shakespeare’s plots, 
was brilliantly illustrated a year later by his Specimens 
of English Dramatic Poets, with critical comments. His 
reading in the Elizabethan drama was extensive, his appre- 
ciation of its qualities subtle and penetrating, and his 
enthusiasm for it unbounded. The book did much to re- 
vive the almost extinguished fame of the lesser drama- 
tists grouped about Shakespeare. It is one of the earliest, 
as well as one of the most significant products of the new 
romantic criticism. 

But it was not as a critic of literature, but as a com- 
mentator upon life, as a gentle egoist, without a trace of 
vanity or self-assertion, recording his moods, his memories, 
his witty and tender observations, that Lamb was to fulfil 
‘ Essays of P ecu ^ ar literary destiny. The Essays of 

Eiia.” Elia ,* published at intervals in the London 

Magazine, were at length gathered together and repub- 
lished in two series, the first in 1823, the second ten years 
later. They established Lamb in the title which he still 
holds, that of the most delightful of English essayists. 
They cover a great variety of topics, but the approach to 
the subject is always a personal one ; and it is this intimate 
quality, communicating to us by some intangible sugges- 
tion the author’s odd and lovable personality, which con- 
stitutes their chief charm. Many of them are confessions 


*The pseudonym Elia was borrowed by Lamb from an Italian clerk 
in the South Sea House, named Ellia. The change of spelling has led 
to the broadening of the initial letter in pronunciation. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


301 


Their Style. 


of personal prejudice, such as the essay entitled “Imper- 
fect Sympathies,” where Lamb’s dislike of Scotchmen and 
his taste for Quakers is made matter of deli- 
cious mirth. In “Old China” Lamb gives a TheirMattcr * 
winning picture of his home life with his sister, who 
appears here and elsewhere as “cousin Bridget.” In 
“Dream Children,” a beautiful and deeply affecting essay, 
he talks with two children conjured from nothingness to 
solace for an hour his lonely hearth. To turn from an 
essay like this to the famous extravaganza entitled “A 
Dissertation on Roast Pig,” is to sound the full gamut of 
Lamb’s pathos and humor. 

The style of these essays is curiously compounded of 
elements borrowed from older writers, especially from Bur- 
ton and Sir Thomas Browne. But in passing 
through Lamb’s temperament these elements 
are fused into a style wholly new and individual, betraying 
its remote origin only by a certain rareness and charming 
quaintness of flavor. The Elia papers continue the tradi- 
tions of essay writing fixed by Addison and Steele, but their 
range is wider, and their treatment of human life is marked 
by the more searching pathos, the more sensitive and 
flashing humor, which belonged to Lamb as a partaker 
in the spiritual awakening of the nineteenth century. 

The romantic tinge of Lamb’s mind is the more note- 
worthy, because, like the eighteenth century men from 
whom he borrowed the idea of the essay, he cared little for 
natural beauty, and was essentially an urban spirit. Lon- 
don, its streets, its shops, its theatres, was the place of his 
affection, and he has pictured many of the phases of its 
life with the vividness that comes from personal delight. 
In him we see, in a very curious and striking way, the in- 
crement of romantic sensibility infused into and transform- 
ing a nature belonging in many respects to the age of the 
Queen Anne wits. 

In Thomas De Quincey the romantic element is more 


302 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


pronounced, and displays itself not only in his writings, 
but in the circumstances of his life. lie was born in Man- 
chester in 1785, the son of a prosperous mer- 
De Qumcey. c p an |. ^ f ore jg n trade. At sixteen he ran 
away from the Manchester grammar-school, and spent a 
summer wandering in North Wales, often sleeping on the 
open hills or in the tents of gypsies. When the cold 
weather came on, he made his way to London, where he led 
a starved and vagrant existence, until he was reclaimed by 
his family and sent to Oxford. He was one of the earliest 
converts to the “ Lake poetry,” and after leaving college 
he established himself at Grasmere, in the neighborhood 
of Wordsworth and Southey. Here he lived for more 
than twenty years, reading prodigiously and eating vast 
quantities of opium. By reason of some peculiarity 
of his constitution the drug was less fatal in its workings 
than is commonly the case ; but the splendid and tumultu- 
ous dreams which it brought were paid for by periods of 
awful gloom and lassitude. In his thirty-first year De 
Quincey married. Forced to earn money by his pen, he 
published in 1821-1822 the famous Confessions of an Eng- 
lish Opium-Eater , ami from this time forth he poured out 
magazine articles on almost every conceivable topic. In 
1830 he removed, with his wife and children, to Edin- 
burgh, where he resided until his death in 1859. 

His best-known work is also his most characteristic, the 
Opium-Eater and its sequel Suspiria de Profundis. Only 
* « confessions a sma ^ P or tion of the Opium-Eater deals with 
Eater ° ,P,ium ’ su kject opium-taking. It is an extended 

autobiography, covering the life of the author 
from early childhood to about the year 1819, when his 
bondage to opium became absolute, and he descended into 
the valley of the shadow where he was to gather the dol- 
orous matter of his Suspiria . The most powerful portion 
of the narrative, aside from the description of his opium- 
sensations, is that which tells of his life of vagrancy and 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


30b 


starvation in London, and of his nightly wanderings with 
“ poor Ann” through the crowded desolation of Oxford 
street. The Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths) 
is made up mainly of dream-phantasies transcribed from 
the actual wanderings of his mind under the spell of 
opium, or suggested by them. 

In such phantasmagoric imaginings as “ Levana and Our 
Ladies of Sorrow,” in the Suspiria, and the “Dream- 
Fugue” appended to the English Mail-Coach , HisCharac- 
De Quineey ventured upon a new domain of tenstlc st y le * 
imaginative prose ; a region audaciously won from verse, to 
which, by virtue of its impassioned and ideal character, it 
properly belongs. His studies of Elizabethan prose- writers 
may have given him the hint ; but he carried out as a delib- 
erate experiment what with them had been an unconscious 
confusion of the categories of prose and verse. In doing 
so, he revealed new possibilities in the English tongue. 
The following passage from the Opium-Eater will illus- 
trate the poetical quality of his style. It describes a series 
of dreams suggested by the sight of a mysterious Malay, 
who appeared one day at De Quincey’s door : — “ I brought 
together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, that are 
found in all tropical regions. . . I was stared at, 

hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by par- 
oquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed 
for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms ; I was the 
idol ; I was the priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed. 
I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of 
Asia ; Vishnu hated me ; Seeva lay in wait for me. I came 
suddenly upon Isis and Osiris : I had done a deed, they 
said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. Thou- 
sands of years I lived and was buried in stone coffins, with 
mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of 
eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by 
crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable 
abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.” Upon this 


304 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


and similar passages of richly wrought, fantastically col- 
ored, chanting prose, De Quincey’s fame as a writer rests. 
The qualities of style exhibited in them have had a great 
influence upon the prose writing of the century, an influ- 
ence which can be traced in such widely different writers 
as Bulwer and Ruskin. 

Two serious charges are to be brought against De Quincey 
as a writer, — diffuseness and triviality. He cannot resist 
His Defects the slightest temptation to digress, and even in 
as a writer. mos t so i em n pages of his Confessions, and 

in the midst of the touching story of Joan of Arc’s child- 
hood, he is capable of falling into a queer kind of “ rig- 
marole ” made up of pedantry and mirthless jesting. In 
reading him we are often visited by an uncomfortable sense 
of dealing with a nature not quite responsible and not quite 
human. He illustrates both the defects and the virtues of 
the romantic temper ; its virtues in the enkindled splendor 
of his fancy and the impassioned sweep of his style ; its 
defects in his extravagance, his unevenness, his failure to 
exercise adequate self-criticism. \/ 

During the period of lull following the death of Byron 
and preceding the outburst of the new Victorian literature, 
a decided reaction from the romantic to the 

pio O Cl 1 D A ^ 

actionin classic ideal is seen in Walter Savage Landor. 

In him this reaction is the more noteworthy 
because he began as a romantic poet of the extreme type, 
and wrote romantic dramas until a year or two before 
Byron’s death ; when he began to cultivate the classi- 
cal, dignified, restrained prose for which his name is 
famous. 

Landor’s life was a very long one. Born in 1775, he 
published an important poem, Gebir, in 1798, a short 
while before the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth 

Landor’ s Life. ^ 

and Coleridge heralded the triumph of the ro- 
mantic movement. Gebir is a fantastic narrative, con- 
ceived in a mood of wild romanticism such as only Shelley 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


305 


could rival ; upon Shelley, indeed, the poem had a strong in- 
fluence. If Landor had had, at this earlier period, greater 
artistic poise and sureness, Gebir and not the Lyrical 
Ballads might now he held to signalize the triumph of the 
new romantic poetry. But the poem is incoherent and 
immature, and in spite of many beauties, is a failure. It 
lies outside Landor's characteristic work, as do likewise 
the efforts which he made during the next twenty-five 
years in the romantic drama. It was not until his forty- 
sixth year that he found his genuine manner, and began to 
produce work of permanent beauty. In 1821 he went to 
Italy, and settled near Florence, on the slope of Fiesole, 
in a beautiful villa, the garden of which, full of clouds of 
olive-trees and spires of cypress, commanded a magnifi- 
cent view of the valley of the Arno and the far-stretching 
hills of Tuscany. Here he wrote most of those lofty 
and serene works by which he will be remembered, es- 
pecially the Imaginary Conversations , and Pericles and 
Aspasia. 

The vitality of LandoFs genius in old age is almost with- 
out parallel. At seventy he published a series of poems on 
subjects from old Greek life, which have all the freshness 
and spontaneous joy of youth. At least one of these, the 
“Hamadryad,” should be read in connection with the 
loveliest of LandoFs youthful lyrics, “ Rose Aylmer,” in 
order that the persistence of his freshness of feeling 
through a literary career of fifty years, may be appre- 
ciated. He died in 1864, long after his early contempo- 
raries had passed away, and a new generation of writers 
had arisen, with new aims and ideals. His literary life 
covered the immense span from the earliest work of 
Wordsworth to the Atlanta in Calydon of Swinburne. 
His personal life, in curious contrast with the serenity 
and classic poise of his best work, was one of constant 
storm, of furious quarrels and eccentric outbursts of tem- 
per. There is something pathetic in the unconscious 


306 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


irony of the opening line of the quatrain in which he took 
leave of earth : 


I strove with none, for none was worth my strife : 
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art ; 

I warmed both hands before the fire of life ; 

It sinks, and I am ready to depart. 


In the Imaginary Conversations , Landor brings to- 
gether significant personalities, from all lands and all 
periods of history, sometimes in couples, some- 
nary convefsa- times in larger groups, and represents them in 
talk with one another. The mediaeval baron 
Leofric talks with his bride Godiva, as they ride into 
Coventry ; iEsop, the Phrygian fable-writer, talks with 
Rhodope, a young Greek slave-girl, in the house of their 
Egyptian master ; Henry the Eighth talks with Anne 
Boleyn in her prison ; Dante talks with Beatrice in a 
Florentine garden in spring ; the young Marcellus, 
wounded to death, confronts for a moment the conquering 
Hannibal. For the most part, the characters which Lan- 
dor evokes are lofty and magnanimous ones ; and the 
dialogue shows no attempt at dramatic realism, but is al- 
ways stately, pure, and exquisitely finished. Nothing is 
allowed to interfere with the classical precision and chaste 
rhythmic beauty of the style. In a sense, all the charac- 
ters of the Conversations talk alike, using a diction and 
idiom removed from the realities of daily speech, and sug- 
gesting their individuality only by the more subtle differ- 
ences of their thought and action. There is a certain 
aloofness and austerity in Landor’s manner which often 
repel the reader on first acquaintance, but which, when 
once accepted, rather add to than lessen his pleasure. 
The purpose which lurks behind the Conversations, too, is 
usually as nobly and calmly serious as the style. It is 
these three characteristics, loftiness of character, dignity 
of style, and nobility of purpose, which make the Im- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


307 


aginary Conversations classic, in the broader sense of the 
word ; and which make them, after Milton’s poetry, 
perhaps the best substitute afforded by English literature 
for a training in the Greek and Latin writers. 

In Pericles and Aspasia , Landor substituted for the 
conversational manner, the epistolary. In a series of famil- 
iar letters passing between the major and the « <Pericles and 
minor characters of the book, we are told how Aspasia.” 
Aspasia, a young woman of Asia Minor, comes to Athens, 
then at the height of its splendor under the wise rule of 
Pericles ; how she meets the great leader, and comes to 
know, on terms of intimate friendship, Alcibiades, Soc- 
rates, and many other famous men of the age. We are 
given thus, in a delightfully natural and. casual way, a 
picture of the intellectual capital of the antique world in 
its heyday, a picture which makes the Athens of Pericles 
seem wonderfully near at hand and comprehensible. 
Aspasia, as she reveals herself in her letters, is a triumph 
of feminine portraiture. Her playfulness, her wit, her girl- 
ish adventurousness, her unpedantic delight in intellectual 
things, the womanly way .in which her nature rises and 
sobers itself to meet the grave nature of Pericles, all 
combine harmoniously to make a woman such as Shake- 
speare might have created. Pericles and Aspasia is the 
work through which Landor can most profitably be ap- 
proached. Its style has his characteristic elevation and 
serious beauty, united with more than his ordinary share 
of vivacity and tender grace. 

From the death of Byron in 1824 until the decisive 
appearance of Tennyson in 1842, there was a period of 
comparative exhaustion in English literature. Keats and 
Shelley were dead ; Coleridge was lost in metaphysics, and 
Wordsworth had almost ceased to produce poetry of value ; 
Scott died in 1832, and the best work of Lamb was done 
before that date. The first great wave of romanticism, 
which had begun to rise a century before, with Thomson and 


308 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Gray, and which had reached its height in the first two 
decades of the nineteenth century, had passed by. During 
this period of lull, the new forces which were to 
the Victorian go to the making of literature during the reign 
of Victoria, were gathering head. Tennyson, 
Browning and Carlyle had already appeared ; and, although 
they remained as yet comparatively obscure, they were 
doing some of their greatest work. Thomas Hood (1798- 
1845), in his “ Bridge of Sighs ” and “ Song of the Shirt,” 
had struck the note of humanitarian sympathy w r ith the 
unfortunate and oppressed, which was to swell in volume 
and depth through the whole course of Victorian litera- 
ture. We must now consider what other distinctive ele- 
ments went to the making of that literature, gigantic in 
bulk and almost infinite in variety, which places the era of 
Victoria beside that of Elizabeth in literary importance. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE VICTORIAN ERA 

The literature of the long reign of Victoria (1837-1901), 
presents the features natural in an era of great social change 
and intellectual advancement. Never before, not General char- 
even in the troubled seventeenth century, have Victorian 8 ° f 
there been such rapid and sweeping changes in Literature, 
the social fabric of the English-speaking races ; and never 
before has literature been so closely in league, or so openly 
at war, with the forces of social life. Among the many cir- 
cumstances making for change, the chief one has been the 
growth of democracy. The Reform Bill of 1832 placed the 
political power of England in the hands of the middle class, 
and since that date there has been a gradual extension of the 
suffrage to the working classes. With the growth of de- 
mocracy has gone the spread of popular education, and a 
great increase in the number of readers of books. A vast 
body of people who heretofore have had little or no access to 
literature, have been reached by it, and have in turn influ- 
enced its character. Almost all the great Victorian writers 
have been absorbed in the attempt to move, instruct, or in- 
spire the huge, unleavened mass of society. The astonish- 
ing development of the mechanical arts and of commerce, 
while it has increased the comforts of living, has led to an 
absorption in material interests against which nearly every 
great writer has lifted his voice in protest and warning. 
The discoveries of science have thrown into the world a 
multitude of conceptions of the most revolutionary kind, 
unsettling many of the old bases of belief, and affecting 
literature in numberless ways. Along with these causes of 

309 


310 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

change there has gone, also, a restless search after some new 
form of society, or some modification of the old forms, by 
which the claims of all men to life and opportunity should 
be met. Social unrest is the great distinguishing feature 
of the Victorian era ; and the demand for social justice 
has colored, in one way or another, the whole thought of 
the time. 

It follows from all this, that the most striking char- 
acteristic of Victorian literature is its strenuousness, its 
conscious purpose. Both poets and prose-writers have 
worked under the shadow and burden of a conscious social 
responsibility. Almost all of them have been makers of 
doctrine, preachers of some crusade, or physicians offering 
some cure for man’s perplexities and despairs. Instead of 
the light-hearted interest in life which the Elizabethans 
show, instead of the transcendental dreaming of the gener- 
ation of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, we 
find as the prevailing mood an earnest and often troubled 
facing of the issues of life, which are recognized to be mo- 
mentous. 

Nevertheless, the romantic impulse persists. There are 
some minor reversions to classicism, but taken largely, lit- 
erature has continued to be romantic, in the novelty and 
variety of its form, in its search after undiscovered springs 
of beauty and truth, in its emotional and imaginative in- 
tensity. In fact the whole literary effort of the Victorian 
age may be conceived of as an effort to open to the masses 
of men those sources of romantic feeling which in the early 
part of the century were known only to a few privileged 
souls. 

At the threshold of the period, however, we find a 
writer concerning whom little of what has just been said 
is true ; an unromantic, practical nature, who shows 
no trace of unrest and spiritual striving, but who is em- 
inently satisfied with things as they are. . Thomas Babing- 
ton Macaulay tfas born in 1800, of Scotch and Quaker 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


311 


ancestry. At Cambridge, in the midst of the political 
excitement which led up to the Reform Bill, he took a 
middle position between Tory and Radical, in- 
trenching himself in the Whig principles of lib- Macaula y- 
eral conservatism, of which he was all his life a powerful and 
watchful champion. At college he distinguished himself 
as a writer and debater ; and in 1825 his famous essay on 
Milton appeared in the Edinburgh Review, followed by 
other essays which • fastened attention upon him as a new 
force in literature. At thirty he entered Parliament, in 
time to take a conspicuous part in the passage of the 
Reform Bill. Four years later he went to India as legal 
adviser to the Supreme Council, returning in 1838 to play 
once more a leading /ole in the Whig party, until its de- 
feat in 1847. During these nine years appeared several of 
his most famous essays, notably those on the Indian pro- 
consuls, Clive and Warren Hastings. In 1847 he published 
his Lays of Ancient Rome, dignified and vigorous celebra- 
tions, in ballad verse, of the antique civic virtues, as shown 
in Horatius, Virginius, and other Roman worthies. The 
next year^ after long delay, he began to realize the dream 
of his life, in the publication of the first part of his His- 
tory of England . He accomplished, in the five completed 
volumes of his history, only a fragment of the task w T hich 
he had set himself. He died in 1859. 

Gladstone bears testimony that an announcement of 
Macaulay’s intention to speak in Parliament was “ like a 
trumpet call to fill the benches.” His power as 
an orator furnishes the key to what is most their style* 
characteristic in his essays. In a speech, the andMatter - 
meaning must be so clearly stated, so aptly illustrated, so 
skilfully repeated and re-emphasized, that misunderstand- 
ing shall be impossible ; and the flagging attention of the 
audience must be continually stimulated by strong con- 
trasts, by striking antitheses, and by an illusion of rapidity, 
even where the movement is, by the necessity of the sub- 


312 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ject, slow. Suggestiveness, delicate shades of meaning, o:i 
a sort to make the hearer hesitate and ponder, defeat the 
ends of parliamentary discourse ; high imaginativeness, 
strong appeal to the more mystical and spiritual sides of 
man’s nature, are here out of place. Everything must be 
open, sensible, emphatic. In all these respects Macaulay’s 
essays are true to the type of parliamentary speaking. 
Probably no writer has ever been more skilful than Ma- 
caulay in making his whole meaning clear ; none more 
successful in keeping the reader’s mind awake, and his 
sense of movement agreeably satisfied. But on the other 
hand few writers of equal power have been so unsuggestive, 
so devoid of spiritual elevation. He is always downright 
and positive, never in doubt, and never at a loss. Mystics 
like Plato, masters of pure thought like Bacon, complex 
religious natures like Dr. Johnson, fare badly at his hands. 
But his defects served him perhaps as much as his virtues, 
in his work of popularizing knowledge. From the stores 
of his capacious memory, one of the most marvellous on 
record, he presented in lucid and entertaining form a 
great mass of fact and opinion, the educative power of 
which was and still continues to be very great. 

In his History he carried his popularizing zeal into a 
more difficult field, and scored even a more notable suc- 
“ History of cess - a ^ m was t° write a history of Eng- 

Engiand. land f rom the accession of James II. to the end 
of George IV. ’s reign, in a manner so cdncrete, pictu- 
resque, and dramatic, that his narrative of actual events 
should have the fascination of romance ; and, as he himself 
put the case, should have the power “ to supersede the last 
fashionable novel upon the dressing-table of young ladies.” 
The portion of the story which he lived to complete is, in 
fact, presented with a wealth and minuteness of detail con- 
cerning particular persons, places, and events, such as a 
writer of fiction uses to embody the creations of his fancy. 
We do not find in Macaulay a profound view of under- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


313 


lying causes, that large intellectual interpretation of 
events which constitutes the “ philosophy of history ; ” 
but in recompense he gives us, a fascinating story, a broad 
and luminous canvas covered with firmly delineated pict- 
ures, which change before our eyes into new groupings, 
and give place to other spectacles, as in a magic diorama. 

^ Macaulay 's essays were chiefly written between 1825 and 
1840, in tne period of lull which followed the romantic 
outburst of the early part of the century. In his material- 
istic view of life, as well as in his pointed, metallic style, 
he reflects the character of this period, when H is unideal 
men were inclined to exchange the idealistic Viewof be- 
longings and aspirations of the previous era, for a satis- 
fied acceptance of the practical benefits which commerce, 
liberal government, and the mechanical sciences were 
bringing to English life. “ A half -acre in Middlesex,” he 
says, <c is better than a peerage in Utopia.” Of the Crystal 
Palace exhibition, one of those great industrial fairs upon 
which this century has lavished so much effort, he can 
hardly find words to express his admiration. The spread 
of comfort and of material prosperity, constantly arouses 
him to eloquence. He flattered his age by his satisfaction 
with its practical achievements, and by his assurance that 
steam-engines and ballot boxes, for which it had a taste, 
were very good things indeed. But meanwhile another 
voice was raised, in fierce protest and warning. Thomas 
Carlyle, son of one of “ the fighting masons of Ecclefechan,” 
arose to scourge and lament over the age like a prophet of 
old Israel, bidding men ponder what their boasted progress 
was progress toward, and whether, in their zeal for wor- 
ship of the steam-engine and the ballot box, they were not 
perchance bowing down to heathen idols, forgetting the 
God of the spirit. 

Carlyle was born in 1795, at Ecclefechan, a village of the 
Scotch lowlands. After graduating from the University 
of Edinburgh, he rejected the ministry, for which he had 


314 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

been intended, and determined to be “ a writer of books/’ 
In these early days of privation and loneliness, with dys- 
Cariyie : Life pepsia “gnawing like a rat at the pit of his 
and writings, s tomach,”he fought the battle which he after- 
ward described in Sartor Resartus. The “Everlasting 
No,” the voice of unfaith denying God and the worth of life, 
he put from him ; the “ Everlasting Yea,” the assurance that 
life could be made divine through labor and courage, he 
wrote on his banner, as he went forth to do battle against 
the selfishness and spiritual torpor of the age. Carlyle’s 
Life of Schiller and his translations from the German got 
him a hearing with the publishers, but his earnings re- 
mained extremely small. After his marriage with Jane 
Welsh, they went to live at Craigenputtoch, a farm-house 
amid miles of high dreary moor, in a “solitude almost dru- 
idical.” Here Carlyle passed six years (1828-1834). Dur- 
ing this time he produced Sartor Resartus , the book in 
which he first developed his characteristic style and 
thought, and wrote several masterly essays, notably those 
on Burns and Dr. Johnson. In 1834, he came to London, 
taking the house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where he spent 
the long remainder of his life. In 1837 he published The 
French Revolution , which turned the tide of public favor 
toward him. For more than thirty years after this, he 
stood as teacher and preacher to the people of England and 
America, thundering above them wrath, warning, and ex- 
hortation. The most notable works of this long period 
were Chartism (1839), an anti-democratic deliverance on 
the labor questions then agitating England ; Heroes and 
Hero-worship (1841), a great sermon on Veneration, ex- 
horting the world to love, honor, and submit in childlike 
obedience to its heroic men, whether they appear as warrior, 
poet, or priest ; Cromivell (1845), a study of one of Carlyle’s 
typical heroes as king ; Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850) ; the 
Life of John Sterling, a masterpiece of sympathetic biog- 
raphy ; and the History of Friedrich II. (1858-1865), a 


THE KIHETEEHTH CEHTURY 


315 


vast picture of the life and times of the founder of the 
Prussian empire. From 1865 until his death in 1881, the 
veneration in which Carlyle's name was held steadily in- 
creased, though other teachers were rising to take his place, 
and some of the dogmas for which he stood were being 
undermined by time and criticism. 

The actual doctrines which Carlyle preached with such 
Hebraic intensity, — his “ Gospel of Work," his political 
dogma of “ Government by the Best " (instead 
of “government by the worst," as he held SpiritoYbfs 
democracy to he), and all the other shibboleths 
of his unending warfare with his age — are of less moment 
than the spirit which broadly underlies his writing. This 
spirit may be defined as an intense moral indignation 
against whatever is weak, or false, or mechanical ; an in- 
tense moral enthusiasm for whatever is sincere and heroi- 
cally forceful. From this point of view his two typical 
books are Sartor Resartus and Heroes and Hero-worship. 
The first is an attack upon all those social shams and 
mechanisms which defeat the sincerity of life ; the second 
is a paean of praise for those chosen heroic spirits who join 
earnestness with power. Like Byron, Carlyle is in romantic 
revolt against convention; like Wordsworth and Shelley, 
though in a very different way from either, he seeks for 
some positive ideal upon which to construct a habitable 
moral world in place of the uninhabitable one he has 
striven to destroy. Sartor Resartus, which is both de- 
structive and constructive, is pre-eminent in doctrinal 
interest among all his books. It is also extremely ingen- 
ious in plan, and is written with a wonderful mingling of 
wild sardonic humor, keen pathos, and an eloquence and 
imaginative elevation almost biblical. 

“ Sartor Resartus " means “ the tailor re-tailored," and 
its theme is clothes. It purports to be the fragment of a 
great “ clothes-philosophy," the life-work of an eccentric 
German scholar and recluse, Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrock. 


316 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


This philosophy has been left in wild confusion, scribbled 
on scattered leaves, and stuffed helter-skelter into twelve 
“Sartor b a g s s ^ ne( ^ with the twelve signs of the Zodiac. 
Resartus” : Carlyle represents himself merely as editor and 
commentator of this weltering mass of words, 
endeavoring desperately to extract order out of chaos, and 
to lighten a little, with much head-shaking and consterna- 
tion, the dark and mystic abysses of the German professor’s 
thought. This whimsical fancy of Carlyle’s enables him 
to be both author and commentator ; to state astound- 
ing paradoxes and then shrug his shoulders in sign of his 
own irresponsibility ; to take the side of his opponents 
against what he, as a well-regulated editor, pretends to 
find extravagant and crazy doctrine, but what is really 
his own passionate heart’s belief, however perversely ex- 
pressed. 

The book has a twofold meaning. In the first place, it 
is a veiled sardonic attack upon the shams and pretences 
of society, upon hollow rank, hollow official- 
its Meaning. ] 10 p 0W cus t 0 m, out of which life and use- 

fulness have departed. These are, Carlyle hints, the 
clothes which hide the real form of society, garments once 
useful, but grown by lapse of time to be mere fantastic frip- 
pery and stiff disfigurement, stifling the breath and health 
of the social body. Under the shield of this novel idea, he 
attacks the mechanical view of life, mechanical education, 
mechanical government, mechanical religion ; and he 
preaches, now with drollery and paradox, now with fiery 
earnestness and prophetic possession, a return to sincerity 
in all things. In the second place, Carlyle applies the 
Clothes-pliilosophy mystically to the universe at large ; 
showing that as clothes hide the real man, and as custom 
and convention hide real society, so Time and Space hide 
the real spiritual essence of the universe. He gives us, as 
the climax of the book, a transcendental vision of all 
created Nature as the garment of God ; the same idea 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


317 


which Goethe put forth in his description of the earth- 
spirit in Faust : 

“ I sit at the roaring loom of Time 
And weave the living garment of God.” 

The fiction that he was translating from the German 
gave Carlyle an excuse for developing in Sartor Besartus 
a style of expression entirely without example, Jtg gt le . 
full of un-English idiom, of violent inversions, “ cariyiese.” 
startling pauses and sharp angularities, — a style which 
he employed to rouse the attention of his reader as by a 
series of electric shocks. This extraordinary literary in- 
strument he continued to use for the remainder of his life. 
It has been said that henceforth he wrote English no more, 
but “ Cariyiese." AVhatever may be thought of “Car- 
iyiese " on purely artistic grounds, it is certain that it was 
wonderfully well suited to his purpose of rousing a slug- 
gish public out of mental and moral apathy, into an alert- 
ness to great issues. 

Sartor Resartus proved Carlyle to he, with all discount 
for the perversities of his style, a great literary artist. 
This title was broadened and confirmed by his <« The French 
historical masterpiece. The French Revolution. Revolutlon *” 
Here we see to best advantage what Emerson calls the 
“ stereoscopic imagination" of Carlyle, which detaches the 
figures from the background, and gives to the individual 
portraits unmatched vividness. The stupid, patient king, 
the “ lion Mirabeau," the “ sea-green incorruptible Bobe- 
spierre," Marat the “ large-headed dwarfish individual of 
smoke-bleared aspect," — not only these chief figures, but 
the minor ones, a multitude of them, stand out in the 
reader’s memory unforgettably. The larger pictures are 
equally admirable ; the storming of the Bastille, the Feast 
of Pikes, the long-drawn agony of the Night of Spurs. 
Above all, the unity and sweep of the story, reminding 
us of a play of Shakespeare or of iEschylus, only acted 


318 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


by millions of figures on a gigantic stage, make this the 
capital example in English of the dramatic portraiture of 
an historical era, and establish beyond question Carlyle's 
right to be considered a great constructive artist. 

Carlyle poured into the life of his time a stream of in- 
tense moral ardor and indignation which broke up the 

concealed waters and permanently raised the 
Carlyle ’8 0 ± 

service to standard of ethical feeling. He united in re- 
markable degree the artistic and the moral im- 
pulse ; and he is in this respect typical of the Victorian 
era, during which, more than ever before, art has been 
infused with moral purpose. But his nature was too ex- 
travagant, his tone too bitterly protesting, and his method 
too perverse, to allow him to become the supremely rep- 
resentative figure of the age. TTis position was reserved 
for Alfred Tennyson. 

Tennyson was born in 1809, at Somersby Rectory, Lin- 
colnshire. His father was a vicar of the Established 
Tennyson’s Church, holding his living by gift from a large 
Eariy Life landed proprietor ; so that Tennyson was from 

birth in close connection with the main con- 
servative interests of England, ecclesiastical and economic. 
In 1830, while an undergraduate at Cambridge, he pub- 
lished his first volume, a group of little verse-studies in 
word-melody and word-picture. Two years later appeared 
a second volume, showing, in such poems as “ The Lady 
of Shalott" and “ The Lotus-Eaters," a rapidly develop- 
ing and already exquisite art ; and in certain others, like 
“The Palace of Art," giving indication of his ambition 
to be not a singer merely, but also a teacher. Already, 
too, in “The Miller's Daughter" and “The May Queen," 
he began his long series of idylls of English life, short nar- 
ratives richly pictured and melodiously tuned, with which 
he was destined to win the public, all the more easily per- 
haps because of a touch of sentimentality and unreality in 
their treatment. 


THE UTiN'ETEEN'TH CENTURY 


319 


These early volumes produced in the reviews an out- 
burst of ridicule which kept Tennyson for a long time 
silent. For ten years he published nothing, but brooded 
and worked away in his London lodgings ; until, in 1842, 
he came* forth with two volumes which took the critics and 
the world by storm. In these two volumes the range and 
variety of work was phenomenal. Almost every province 
of poetry was touched upon, from the lyric simplicity of 
4 "Break, break, break” to the largely moulded epic nar- 
rative of “Morte d’ Arthur.” The pure dramatic form 
alone was absent, and in spite of many efforts Tennyson 
never succeeded in drama. 

Five years later, in 1847, appeared r Flie Princess. It 
was Tennyson’s contribution to the question, then begin- 
ning to be widely discussed, of the higher edu- <<The 
cation of women. The sub-title is 44 A Medley,” Princess.” 
and no description could be more just. The story is fan- 
tastically mixed, of elements brought from many ages and 
countries, and the style, always ornate and richly jewelled, 
runs through the gamut of true and false eloquence, re- 
turning always to the 44 mock-heroic ” key in which the 
whole poem is somewhat uncertainly pitched. In The 
Princess we see Tennyson’s eagerness to touch the vital 
public questions of his time, in odd conflict with his pure 
poetic interest in picture and melody. In his next work, 
however. In Memoriam (1850), the poetry interpenetrates 
the theme, and the theme itself is one which << InMemo _ 
was just then engaging the minds of men more riam *” 
passionately than ever before in the world’s history — the 
question of the immortality of the soul. The poem was 
written in memory of Arthur Ilallam, a beloved friend 
and college-mate of Tennyson’s, who had died in 1833. It 
consists of a hundred and thirty-one lyrics, 44 short swal- 
low-flights of song,” composed at intervals during seven- 
teen years. In the beginning, the early phases of grief 
are touched upon, moods of stunned and bewildered sor- 


320 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


row ; gradually the personal pain merges itself into anxious 
speculation concerning the mystery of death and the hope 
of immortality ; through states of doubt, despair, and an- 
guished question, the poem slowly mounts into a region of 
firm though saddened faith ; and it ends in a full hymnal 
music breathing hope and fortitude of heart. When In 
Memoriam was written, Darwin's tremendous hypothesis 
of the evolution of human life from lower forms had not 
yet been given to the world ; * but the idea was already in 
the air, and in numberless ways Science had begun to sap 
the old foundations of religious faith. Tennyson coura- 
geously faced the facts of science, as revealed in geology and 
biology ; and he succeeded in wringing religious consolation 
from the very things which were dreaded as a fatal menace 
to religion. In helping to break down the false opposition 
between science on the one hand, and poetry and spiritual 
faith on the other, In Memoriam did a great service to the 
age. 

In 1850, Wordsworth, who had been poet-laureate after 
Southey, died ; and Tennyson took the laurel. A govern- 
Tennysonas ment pension enabled him to marry, and to 
Laureate. settle in the Isle of Wight. From this time 
until his death, forty-two years later, in 1892, he stood as 
the spokesman of his people in times of national sorrow or 
rejoicing. In Maud (1855) he used the Crimean war as a 
background. In such poems as “ The Charge of the Light 
Brigade," “ The Revenge," and the “ Ode on the Duke of 
Wellington," he ministered to national pride, fired the na- 
tional courage, and brought poetry nearer to the national 
life than it had been since Shakespeare. In the Idylls of the 
King he devoted fifteen years to painting the character of 
the first English national hero, King Arthur, and in giving 
a new meaning to the cycle of legend which had grown up 
in the middle ages about the knights of the Round Table. 

* The Origin of Species appeared in 1859, the Descent of Man in 

1871. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


321 


For more than half a century Tennyson held the poetic 
supremacy almost unchallenged. His series of unsuccess- 
ful experiments in the drama partly estranged the public 
from him ; but at the end he won his readers back by sev- 
eral volumes of short poems in his old manner. One of 
these poems, “ Merlin and the Gleam,” has been taken as 
an allegory of his own poetical career ; another, “ Crossing 
the Bar,” seemed to be his farewell word, spoken with sol- 
emn gladness as he put off into the mysterious sea of 
death. 

By far the greatest work of Tennyson’s later life is the 
Idylls of the King. The chief source from which he drew 
was the Morte d’Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory “idyiisof 
(see p. 58). A great tangled mass of legend theKm g-” 
and counter-legend,' the material gathered by Malory, had 
lain for nearly four centuries awaiting the hand of some 
poet able to select, organize, and give it modern meaning. 
Milton had looked at it longingly in his youth, and had 
abandoned it only to take up the greater subject of Par- 
adise Lost. Tennyson began early in his career to dip into 
its treasure-house of fancy, and to make short studies upon 
its themes. In the completed series of Idylls as published 
in 1870, the “ Morte d’Arthur,” published twenty-eight 
years before, is put last of the twelve, and is called “ The 
Passing of Arthur.” The others were written at long in- 
tervals apart, and in a very different order from that in 
which they now appear. The attempt often made to see in 
the Idylls a highly organized epic whole, is futile. The 
kind of epic unity which Milton could and would have 
given to the theme, it has not received at Tennyson’s hands. 
The Idylls are to be read as single poems, bound together 
in loose federation by the persistence through them of 
Arthur’s personality, the attempt which he made to build 
up an ideal kingdom, and the defeat of this attempt by the 
forces of sin and violence. 

The most striking characteristic of Tennyson as an artist 


322 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


is the compass and finish of his style. He essayed every 
kind of poetry, the song, the idyll, the dramatic monologue, 
the dialect poem, the descriptive or “pageant” 
Finish of poem, the ballad, the war-ode, the threnody, 

his style. ^j ie epic narrative, and the drama. In all these, 

except the pure drama, he attained high, and in some the 
highest, excellence. Everywhere his style is one of ex- 
quisite finish, with a flawlessness of technique which it seems 
that no labor could improve. He did with style every- 
thing that conscious mastery can do. He emulated by 
turns the sweet felicity of Keats, the tender simplicity of 
Wordsworth, the straightforward vigor of Burns, the elu- 
sive melody and dreamlike magic of Coleridge, the stormy 
sweep of Byron, the large majesty of Milton ; and he could 
blend them all into a style unmistakably Tennysonian, 
which impressed itself grandly upon his age. His is the 
best example in English of the “eclectic” style, made up 
of elements borrowed from many sources, and perfectly 
fused together. His quiet, sheltered, successful existence 
gave to his poetry uniform mellowness, richness, and seren- 
ity, at some expense of passion, reality, and tragic power, 
comparative It was the comparative weakness in him of these 
his maSatic last qualities which made it impossible for him 
to succeed in the drama. In the Idylls of the 
King, especially in the relations between Lancelot, Guin- 
evere, and Arthur, he had his greatest opportunity to por- 
tray moving human situations, and in certain passages he 
did indeed reach dramatic intensity ; but as a whole the 
Idylls furnish us, not with human reality and tragic force, 
but with beauty — a beauty of dream, of cloudland, of 
Celtic magic ; their whole effect may be best described by 
Keats's phrase, “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.” 

The predominating characteristic of Tennyson's mind is 
his sense of law. The thing which most impresses him 
is the spectacle of order in the universe. The highest 
praise which he can give England is that she is “a land 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


323 


of settled government,” where freedom is ever “ broaden- 
ing down from precedent to precedent.” He is impressed 
by science because its office is to show law H is sense of 
reigning everywhere, subduing all life to a Law - 
vast harmonious scheme. In In Memoriam a majestic 
movement is given to the poem by the fact that it follows 
the year twice through its revolutions, so that the succes- 
sion of day and night, the moon's changing phases, the 
lapsing of the stars in their courses, the slow pageant of 
the seasons, seem at last to enfold with their large har- 
mony and peace the forlorn heart of the mourner. This 
love of order also causes Tennyson to distrust individual 
whim and passion. The story of Trie Princess is the story 
of the overthrow of all that is whimsical and false in the 
heroine's plan for the enfranchisement of her sex, by a 
baby's touch ; and the moral is that woman's place in life 
must be determined by the natural law of her being. In 
the Idylls of the King not only is the passion of Lancelot 
and Guinevere portrayed as the source of the moral ruin 
of Arthur's kingdom ; but even the search for the Holy 
Grail is represented as contributing to this ruin, because 
it draws off Arthur's knights from their true work of es- 
tablishing order and justice, and causes them to lose them- 
selves in the extravagances of mystical passion. Tennyson 
is in constant protest, open or covert, against the individ- 
ualism which the Victorian era inherited from the roman- 
tic revival. Yet he is nevertheless the supremely repre- 
sentative figure of that era, because he included and 
reconciled a greater number of its diverse interests than 
any other single writer. 

Robert Browning, who disputes with Tennyson the first 
place among Victorian poets, is Tennyson's opposite in 
almost every respect but fame and length of 
years. His genius was pre-eminently dramatic ; Browning 
his interest lay, not in universal law, but in indi- Contrasted - 
vidual passion. And his style, instead of being eclectic and 


324 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


carefully elaborated, was individual to the point of lawless* 
ness, and often careless of form in the pursuit of mean- 
ing. Browning is strong where Tennyson is weak, weak 
where Tennyson is strong. Both share almost equally 
in the Victorian tendency toward reflection, and toward 
a didactic aim ; but their reflection was exercised upon 
very different phenomena, and their teaching was widely 
opposed. 

Browning was born in London, in 1812. Mingled with 
the English and Scotch blood in his veins was a more dis- 
tant strain of German and Creole, a fact of 
his Life and value in considering the wide cosmopolitan 
sympathy of his imagination. He passed his 
boyhood and youth in the suburb of Camberwell, near 
enough to London to make the great smoky city on the 
horizon a constant reminder of the complex human life he 
was to interpret more subtly and deeply than any poet 
had done since the Elizabethan age. His first stimulus 
to poetic creation was given by a volume of Shelley which 
he picked up by chance on a London book-stall in his 
fourteenth year. His first long poem, Pauline, published 
in 1833, is a half-dramatic study of the type of spiritual 
life which Shelley’s own career embodied ; and Shelley’s 
influence is clearly traceable both in its thought and in its 
style. After a trip to Russia and Italy, Browning published 
Paracelsus, in his twenty-fourth year. This, like Pauline, 
is the “ history of a soul.” In it, Browning’s wonderful 
endowments are already manifest. His knowledge of the 
causes of spiritual growth and decay, his subtle analysis 
of motive and counter-motive, his eloquence in pleading 
a cause, the enkindled power and beauty of his language 
when blown upon by noble passion, all appear in full 
process of development. The hinderances from which he 
suffered are also only too clear, especially his tendency to 
lose himself in tangled thought, and to grow harsh and 
obscure in pursuing the secondary suggestions of his theme. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


325 


In Sordello (1840) these faults smother down the clear fire 
of poetry into a torpid smoke. In Pippa Passes, however 
(1841), he shook himself entirely free from these faults of 
manner, and produced a poem of sustained beauty, as clear 
as sunlight, a flawless work of simple, melodious, impas- 
sioned art. Between 1840 and 1845 Browning was chiefly 
occupied with attempts in the acting drama, of which 
the most interesting are perhaps In a Balcony, Colombe’s 
Birthday, A Blot in the ’Scutcheon, and The Return of 
the Druses. He had also begun those short poems dealing 
with special moments in the lives of various men and 
women, historical or imaginary, which constitute the 
most important division of his work. These are now in- 
cluded under such collective titles as Dramatic Lyrics, 
Dramatic Romances, and Men and Women. 

In 1846 Browning married Elizabeth Barrett, whose 
poetic reputation was then far greater than his, and went 
to live in Italy. The pair settled at Florence, in the 
house called Casa Guidi, from which was taken the 
title of Mrs. Browning’s poem on the Italian Liberation, 
Casa Guidi Windows. Here Browning continued his great 
series of dramatic monologues. Here also, after Mrs. 
Browning’s death in 1861, he began The Ring and the 
Boole. This is the crowning effort of his genius, for the 
vastness of its scope and its grasp of human nature ; 
though it lacks the spontaneous grace and charm which 
the best of his shorter pieces share with Pippa Passes, that 
perfect fruit of his youthful imagination. After the death 
of his wife, Browning spent most of his time in England. 
He wrote much, with a steady gain in intellectual subtlety, 
but with a corresponding loss of poetic beauty. He made 
a more and more deliberate sacrifice of form to matter, 
wrenching and straining the verse-fabric in order to pack 
into it all the secondary meanings of the theme. To the 
last, however, his genius continued to throw out bursts 
and jets of exquisite music, color, and feeling. Such, for 


326 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


instance, are the little pieces called “ Wanting is — What ? ” 
and “ Never the Time and the Place,” written in his 
seventy-first year; and such is “Summum Bonum,” 
written just before the pen dropped from his hand in 
1889, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. He had had 
to wait long for recognition, but during the latter years 
of his life his fame overshadowed even that of Tennyson, 
and his works were studied and made a cult of, with an 
enthusiasm seldom accorded to a living poet. 

Browning’s earliest poem, Pauline , was, he tells us, in- 
tended as the first of a series of “ mono-dramatic epics,” 
each of which was to present the “ history of a soul.” 
Broadly viewed, the whole of Browning’s work is what his 
youthful ambition dreamed of making it. In three 
forms, pure drama, dramatic narrative, and dramatic 
lyric, he gave the history of hundreds of souls ; or if 
not their whole history, at least some crucial moment of 
it, when its issues trembled in the balance and dipped 
toward good or evil. In his earlier life he made many 
attempts to present these crucial moments in regular 
x x drama intended for the stage, but the form 

Moments ’^of waS P er * ec ^y Slll ^ed to his peculiar task, 
soul History: In Pippa Passes, however, while keeping tbe 
“plppa 6 y dramatic form, he threw aside the demands of 

Passes * * 

stage presentation, and presented four special 
moments of soul-history, connected with each other only 
by a slight thread. The germ of the poem came to him 
in youth, while listening to a gypsy girl singing in the 
Camberwell woods. He imagined someone walking alone 
through life, apparently too obscure to leave any trace 
behind, but unconsciously exercising a lasting influence at 
every step. This abstract conception he afterward con- 
nected with the personality of a little silk-winder in the 
silk-mills of Asolo, a mountain town which he had visited 
on his first journey to Italy. Pippa walks through Asolo 
on Hew Year’s Day, her one holiday in the year, uncon- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


327 


sciously dropping her divine songs into the lives of four 
groups of people, just at the moment when their fates are 
trembling between good and evil, courage and cowardice ; 
and by the touching purity and gladness of her voice, or 
by the significant words she utters, she saves each in turn. 
At evening she goes back to her bare room, and. sinks to 
sleep with a final song on her lips, still ignorant of the ser- 
vice she has done to “ Asolo's happiest four." 

Pippa Passes illustrates the essential qualities of Brown- 
ing's dramatic genius. He cannot throw, as could Shake- 
speare and his fellows, large and varied groups strength and 
of people together, and make them act and in- ^Dramat/c 
teract with the ceaseless play and evolution of Genius * 
life. Nor has he the greater Shakespearean gift — the 
supreme dramatic gift — of forgetting and obscuring him- 
self. In all the words which his characters utter, we seem 
to hear the ring of Browning's own voice ; as an accom- 
paniment to their actions there always runs, silent or ex- 
pressed, his comment of blame or praise. He is less a 
dramatist, than an exhibitor and interpreter of single 
dramatic situations, such as the four which are bound 
loosely together by Pippa's chance-heard songs. But in 
presenting these single situations Browning's power is 
absolute ; here he works with the most graphic vividness, 
and with a compression of meaning which crowds into a 
few lines the implications of a lifetime. 

It follows from the peculiar nature of Browning's dra- 
matic gift, that his most vital work is in his short poems, 
where he handles single situations or soul-states, His Short 
isolated from what has come before and from cufiarlties^f 
what is to come after. In these he not only Method, 
selects by preference a highly special moment in the life of 
the man or woman whose soul he wishes to show us in its 
working, but as a rule he views his theme from some odd 
and striking point of view. Perhaps the very best exam- 
ple of his skill in selecting a point of view, is to be found 


328 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


in the “ Epistle of Karshish.'' The aim of the poem is to 
present the state of mind of a person who has beheld the 
mysteries of existence beyond the grave, and who has 
brought back into mortal life a sense of immortality so 
strong that every act and every judgment is determined 
by it. The time is about thirty years after the death of 
Christ ; and the speaker, Karshish, is an Arabian doctor 
who in travelling through Palestine has met Lazarus, and 
who sends a report of the strange case to his old master in 
leechcraft, Abib. Through the vain struggle of Karshish 
to maintain his scientific scepticism in the face of Lazarus's 
story and bearing, we are made to feel the reality of the 
miracle with overwhelming force, and are brought strangely 
near to the conditions of life in Palestine in the next gen- 
eration after Christ. Another peculiarity of Browning's 
method in his short poems is that he throws the reader into 
the midst of the theme with startling suddenness, and then 
proceeds to flash facet after facet of the subject on him, 
with a rapidity which is apt to bewilder a reader not in the 
secret of the method. There are no explanations, no grad- 
ual transitions ; we are not allowed to guess at the whole 
intention until the end is reached. A capital example of 
this peculiarity is the “ Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister,” 
which has to be read to the end before we see it for what 
it is, the self-revealed picture of a narrow-minded, super- 
stitious, sensual monk, stirred to hatred by a brother 
monk, whose mild, benignant ways and genuine piety we 
gradually discern through the speaker's jeers and curses. 
If we add to these peculiarities of method the fact that 
Browning's best work is very compressed in style, we see 
why many persons have found obscure in him what is in 
reality clear enough, but is not to be perceived clearly with- 
out attention and alertness on the reader's part. Perhaps 
the poem which best illustrates all Browning’s peculiarities 
of method, harmoniously combined, is “ My Last Duchess,” 
a marvellous example of his power to give a whole life- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


329 


history, with a wealth of picturesque detail, in a few lines 
intensely compressed and heavily weighted with sugges- 
tion. 

The range of Browning's dramatic sympathy is very 
great. In “ Caliban upon Setebos " he has shown the gro- 
tesque protoplasmic imaginings of a half-human 
monster, groping after an explanation of the Dramatic 
universe. In “ Childe Roland " he has shown Sympathy - 
the mystical heart of mediaeval knighthood, fronting spec- 
tral terrors in its search after the stronghold of sin, the 
Dark Tower where lurks the enemy of life and joy. In 
“Abt Vogler," and a “A Toccata of Galuppi's"he has 
touched upon the inner meanings of music, and has painted 
for us permanent types of the musical enthusiast. In “ The 
Grammarian's Funeral " he has shown the poetry and hero- 
ism hidden underneath the gray exterior of the life of a 
Renaissance pedant. In “Fra Lippo Lippi," “Andrea 
del Sarto," and “ Pictor Ignotus," he has given the psy- 
chology of the painter's nature, and has flashed illumination 
upon the sources of success and failure in art which lie 
deep in the moral being of the artist. In “ Balaustion's 
Adventure " he has revealed the inner spirit of Greek life 
in the fourth century before Christ. In “ A Death in the 
Desert" he* has led us into the mystical rapture of the 
early Christians ; and in “ Christmas Eve " and “ Easter 
Day " he has approached Christian faith from the modern 
position. In “ Saul " he has shown us, against the splendid 
background of patriarchal Israel, the boy David singing, 
in the tent of the great king, songs of human joy which 
rise, in a sudden opening of the heavens of prophecy, 
into a song of the coming of the Messiah. Nowhere out 
of Shakespeare can be found a mind more wide-ranging 
over the outer circumstances and the inner significance 
of man's life, or a more unwearied inquiry into its spirit- 
ual crises. 

Browning's poetry is intensely charged with moral pur- 


330 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


pose. The world is for him, in Keats’s phrase, the “ Val- 
ley of Soul-making ; ” and every act, thought, and feeling 
of life is of concern only as it hinders or determines the 
soul on its course. But he believes salvation to lie, not, as 
Hi S does Tennyson, in the suppression of individual 

Teaching. and passion, but in their strenuous exer- 

cise. It is the moments of high excitement in human life 
which interest him, because in such moments the great 
saving assertions of will and passion are made. Hence his 
interest in art, which embodies these moments of high 
excitement ; and hence his indifference to science, which 
deals with impersonal law. Love, as the supreme expe- 
rience and function of the soul, testing its temper and 
revealing its probable fate, holds the first place in his 
thought. In such poems as “ Cristina,” “Evelyn Hope,” 
“The Last Ride Together,” “My Star,” “By the Fire- 
side,” and a multitude more, he has presented love in 
its varied phases ; and has celebrated its manifold mean- 
ings not only on earth, but in the infinite range of worlds 
through which he believes that the soul is destined to 
go in search after its own perfection. By the intensity 
and positiveness of his doctrine he has influenced his 
age profoundly, and has made his name synonymous 
with faithfulness to the human love which life brings, 
and through that to the divine love which it implies and 
promises. 

The robustness of Browning's nature, its courage, its 
abounding joy and faith in life, make his works a perma- 
nent storehouse of spiritual energy for the race, a store- 
house to which for a long time to come it will in certain 
moods always return. In an age distracted by doubt and 
divided in will, his strong unfaltering voice has been lifted 
above the perplexities and hesitations of men, like a bugle- 
call to joyous battle in which the victory is .to the brave. 

One of Browning's most perfect short poems, “ One 
Word More,” is addressed to his wife, Elizabeth Barrett 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


331 


Browning (1806 *-1861), and is a kind of counter-tribute 
to her most perfect work, the Sonnets from the Portuguese , 
which contain the record of her courtship and Mrs 
marriage. Her early life was shadowed by Browning, 
illness and affliction; and her early poetry ( The Seraphim , 
1838, Poems, 1844) shows in many places the defects of 
unreality and of overwrought emotion natural to work 
produced in the loneliness of a sick-chamber. The best 
known of these early poems are perhaps “Lady Geraldine's 
Courtship," where she works under the influence of Tenny- 
son's idylls, and “ The Cry of the Children," where she 
voices the humanitarian protest against the practice of 
employing child-labor in mines and factories. After her 
marriage and removal to Italy her health improved, and 
her art greatly strengthened itself. The Sonnets from the 
Portuguese (1850) are among the noblest love-poems in the 
language, taking rank with Shakespeare's Sonnets and 
RossettBs House of Life as one of the three great English 
sonnet-cycles. Mrs. Browning was deeply interested in the 
struggle of Italy to shake off her bondage to Austria, as is 
shown by her Casa Guidi Windows, published in 1851. In 
1856 appeared her most ambitious work, Aurora Leigh, a 
kind of versified novel of modern English life, with a social 
reformer and humanitarian, of aristocratic lineage, for 
hero, and a young poetess, in large part a reflection of Mrs. 
Browning's own personality, for heroine. Aurora Leigh 
shows the influence of a great novel- writing age, when the 
novel was becoming more and more imbued with social 
purpose. It attempts to perform in verse the same social 
function which Dickens, George Eliot, Kingsley, and 
others, strove to perform in prose. The interest in public 
questions also appears in Mrs. Browning's Poems before 
Congress (1860), and in her Last Poems (1862). 

* Mrs. Browning’s birth is usually given as 1809. We have, how- 
ever, Browning’s own positive statement as to the correctness of the 
earlier date. 


332 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Mrs. Browning’s technique is uncertain, and she never 
freed herself from her characteristic faults of vagueness 
and unrestraint. But her sympathy with noble causes, 
the elevation and ardor of her moods of personal emotion, 
and the distinction of her utterances at its best, outbalance 
these negative considerations. She shares her husband’s 
strenuousness and optimism, but she speaks always from 
the feminine vantage-ground. Her characteristic note is 
that of intimate, personal feeling ; even Casa Guidi Win- 
dows has been aptly called “ a woman’s love-making with 
a nation.” 

Browning’s robust optimism in the face of all the un- 
settling and disturbing forces of the age is thrown out in 
sharp relief, when we contrast him with a some- 
what younger poet, Matthew Arnold, in whom 
the prevailing tone is one of doubt and half-despairing 
stoicism. Arnold was born in 1822, the son of Dr. Thomas 
Arnold, the famous head-master of Rugby. He went 
up to Oxford just at the time when the neo-Catholic 
religious revival, under John Keble and John Henry 
Newman, was stirring the university to its depths. The 
unsettling effect of this agitation, coming after the very 
different religious teaching of Rugby, had much to do with 
determining Arnold’s characteristic attitude of mind tow- 
ard questions of faith. From his thirtieth year until 
shortly before his death in 1888, he held the position of 
Inspector of Schools. To the demands and responsibilities 
of this official position were added, in 1857, those of a pro- 
fessorship of poetry at Oxford. These outer circumstances 
were largely instrumental in turning his energies away 
from poetry, into the field of prose criticism, where, for 
the last twenty years of his life, he held the position of a 
leader, almost of a dictator. 

Arnold may be described as a poet of transition. His 
bent as a poet was taken chiefly between 1840 and 1850. 
These were the closing years of the transition between the 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


333 


first and the second outburst of creative energy in the 

century. Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, and Newman, 

were, each in his way, already building anew 

the structures of spiritual faith and hope ; but Poet of 

to Arnold, as to many others, the ebbing of 

the old wave was far more clearly felt than the rising of 

the new one. Standing, as he says, 

“ between two worlds, one dead, 

The other powerless to be born,” 

he fronts life wearily, or at best stoically. He seeks con- 
solation in the intellect ; and his poetry, though penetrated 
with romantic sensibility, has always the intellectual self- 
consciousness which betrays the classical bias. 

On the side of religion, Arnold's dejection led him 
to a melancholy return upon the old faiths, and to a 
stoical rejection of them as outworn things, “ a dead 
time's exploded dream." He has expressed this His Attitude 
at least twice very impressively, in “Dover Toward Llfe - 
Beach " and “ Obermann." It is this same dejection ap- 
plied to the facts of human intercourse, which breathes 
sadly but calmly through the series of love lyrics entitled 
“ Switzerland." Just as he has felt compelled to surren- 
der his faith in a personal God and a compassionate Saviour, 
so, as he regards the human heart and its destiny, he loses 
faith in the heart's promises as well. He sees the sad in- 
stability of mortal affection, rather than its heroic constancy; 
he is pierced by a sense of the inevitable loneliness of each 
human soul. The imperfections and unrealized ideals of 
life, in which Tennyson found cause to “ faintly trust the 
larger hope," and in which Browning saw the “broken 
arcs *' of Heaven's “perfect round," Arnold made a reason 
for doubt, declaring that men should put away delusion, 
and expect in the future only what they see in the past. 
Other phases of this stoic dejection, and of the struggle 
which it wages with the restless craving for joy, are to be 


334 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


studied in the pieces called “Self-Dependence” and “A 
Summer Night.” 

For his ideal of form, Arnold went resolutely to the liter- 
ature of Greece, abjuring romantic wilfulness and vague- 
ms ideal of ness > ^ avor °f classic lucidity and restraint. 
Form. When he works more deliberately in the 

Greek spirit and manner, his style is often cold and 
dry. In his long poems, especially, he is apt to sac- 
rifice too much to his reverence for classical tradition. 
Only one of them, “ Sohrab and Rustum,” combines 
classic purity of style with romantic ardor of feeling. The 
truth of its oriental color, the deep pathos of the situa- 
tion, the fire and intensity of the action, the strong con- 
ception of character, and the full, solemn music of the 
verse, make “ Sohrab and Rustum ” unquestionably the 
masterpiece among Arnold’s longer poems. The same 
unity of classic form with romantic feeling characterizes 
his two shorter masterpieces, “ The Scholar Gypsy ” and 
“ Thyrsis,” which are crystal-clear without coldness, and 
restrained without loss of a full volume of power. 

Arnold was not able, in his poetry, to live through the 
period of dejection and doubt, and to follow to their ma- 
ture issues such hints of hope and faith as his poems show. 
Not even in “ Thyrsis,” the beautiful threnody in which 
he celebrated his dead friend Clough, has he found it 
possible to embrace any but the most shadowy consola- 
tion. In “ Obermann Once More,” he does, indeed, for a 
moment emerge into something like optimism ; but when 

that piece was written his work as a poet was 

His Desertion -tttt-io*-.! , 

of Poetry for done. He had definitely chosen to work out his 

life on the lower levels of prose, and had put 
aside most of the deeper questionings, to occupy himself 
with matters of taste and discrimination. From the first, 
the intellectual element of his verse had threatened to 
smother the emotional, and now the critic finally took 
the place of the poet in him. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


335 


Arnold’s prose lias little trace of the wistful melancholy 
of his verse. It is almost always urbane, vivacious, light- 
hearted. The classical bent of his mind shows itself here, 
unmixed with the inheritance of romantic feeling which 
colors his poetry. Not only is his prose classical in quality, 
by virtue of its restraint, of its definite aim, and of the 
dry white light of intellect which suffuses it ; but the doc- 
trine which he spent his life in preaching is based upon a 
classical ideal, the ideal of symmetry, wholeness, or, as he 
daringly called it, perfection . Carlyle had preached the 
value of conduct, the “ Hebraic” element in life; Arnold 
set himself to preach the value of the complementary “ Hel- 
lenic” element, — open-mindedness, delight in His “Gospel 
ideas, alertness to entertain new points of view ofIdeas -” 
and willingness to examine life constantly in the light of 
new postulates. AVherever, in religion, politics, education, 
or literature, he saw his countrymen under the domination 
of narrow ideals, he came speaking the mystic word of 
deliverance, “Culture.” Culture, acquaintance with the 
best which has been thought and done in the world, is his 
panacea for all ills. It is by culture that the Puritan dis- 
senter shall be made to see the lack of elevation and beauty 
in his church forms ; that the radical politician shall reach 
a saving sense of the rawness and vulgarity of his pro- 
gramme of state ; that the man whose literary taste is bad 
shall be admitted into the true kingdom of letters. In 
almost all of his prose writing he attacks some form of 
“ Philistinism,” by which word he characterized the 
narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction of the British 
middle class. 

Arnold’s tone is admirably fitted to the peculiar task he 
had to perform. Carlyle, in Past and Present and else- 
where, had preached the gospel of action, with His Prose 

fiery earnestness, in the spirit of a Hebrew Manner, 

prophet ; Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy and many 
successive works, made his plea for the gospel of 


336 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ideas with urbanity and playful grace, as befitted the Hel- 
lenic spirit, bringing “ sweetness and light " into the 
dark places of British prejudice. Sometimes, as in Liter- 
ature and Dogma , where he pleads for a more liberal and 
literary reading of the Bible, his manner is quiet, suave, 
and gently persuasive. At other times, as in Friendship’s 
Garland , he shoots the arrows of his sarcasm into the 
ranks of the Philistines with a delicate raillery and scorn, all 
the more exasperating to his foes because it is veiled by a 
mock humility, and is scrupulously polite. 

Of Arnold's literary criticism, the most notable single 
piece is the famous essay “On Translating Homer/' 
which deserves careful study for the enlightenment it 
His Literary offers concerning many of the fundamental 
criticism. questions of style. The essays on Wordsworth 
and on Byron, from Essays in Criticism, and that on Em- 
erson, from Discourses in America, furnish good examples 
of Arnold's charm of manner and weight of matter in this 
province. 

The total impression which Arnold makes in his prose 
may be described as that of a spiritual man-of-the-world. 
In comparison with Carlyle, Ruskin, and Newman, he is 
worldly. For the romantic passion and mystic vision of 
these men, he substitutes an ideal of balanced cultivation, 
His “Post drained, sympathetic, cosmo- 

Romanticj’w politan gentleman. He marks a return to the 
* conventions of life after the storm and stress of 
the romantic age. Yet in his own way he also was a 
prophet and a preacher, striving whole-heartedly to re- 
lease his countrymen from bondage to mean things, and 
pointing their gaze to that symmetry and balance of char- 
acter which has seemed to many noble minds the true goal 
of human endeavor. 

The dictatorship of taste which Arnold held in mat- 
ters of literature, was held in matters of art by John 
Ruskin ; who also broadened his criticism, as did Arnold, 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


337 


into the region of social and moral ideals. His nature was 
a more ardent one than Arnold’s ; and his crusade against 
bad art, as well as against social and moral R US kin : His 
falsehood, partook of the Hebraic intensity of 25a^jt 1,e 
Carlyle, whose disciple, indeed, he acknowledged Criticism - 
himself to be. He was born in 1819. His father, a London 
wine-merchant of wealth and liberal tastes, gave him every 
early advantage of education and travel. Family carriage 
trips through England, France, and Switzerland, enabled 
him to gather those impressions of landscape beauty and of 
architectural effect, which he afterward put to remarkable 
use in his critical writings. A boyish enthusiasm for the 
paintings of William Turner ripened with years into an 
ardent championship of that wonderful artist, then ob- 
scure and neglected. In the first volume of Modern 
Painters , published in his twenty-fourth year, Ruskin en- 
shrined Turner as the greatest of English landscape paint- 
ers. In doing so, however, his powers of analysis led him 
deep into the abstract theory of art ; and in the remain- 
der of the work, published at intervals during the next 
eighteen years, he examined many types and schools of 
painting, separating what he held to be true from what he 
held to be false, with haughty and uncompromising assur- 
ance. Meanwhile, in The Seven Lamps of Architecture and 
Stones of Venice, he made a similar examination of the 
principal types of European architecture, and attempted 
to establish similar underlying principles concerning their 
growth and decay, their worth and worthlessness. Many 
of Ruskin’s judgments may of course be dissented from, 
but it cannot be questioned that in his writings art 
criticism was put for the first time upon a broad philo- 
sophic basis. He believed the springs of art to lie deep in 
the moral nature of the artist, and in the moral temper of 
the age and nation which produced him. Latent or ex- 
pressed, this is the pervading idea of all Ruskin’s art 
criticism. By insistence upon this view, by eloquent 


338 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


illustration and fiery defence of it, he gradually led his 
readers to a new understanding of the spiritual meaning of 
art, and awakened them to a new discrimination. 

In 1860, at forty years of age, Ruskin finished Modern 
Painters , and practically closed that series of works which 
Later Life : had mft de him the foremost art critic of the cen- 
!conom£? d tury. From this time on he used art mainly as 
Teaching. illustration and text, by means of which to en- 
force some ethical, economic, or religious lesson. He be- 
came more and more absorbed in the problems of socialism, 
being led thereto by the conviction at which he had arrived 
in his previous work, that all great art must be national and 
social, and must spring from healthy and beautiful condi- 
tions of life in the society where it arises. Modern art he 
held to be, with a few exceptions, debased ; and he gradually 
came to believe that this debasement was due to our com- 
mercial organization of society. In two books, Munera 
Pulveris and Unto This Last, he protested against the 
received theories of political economy. The outline of 
his thought is imperfectly filled in, but the substance of 
his teaching is that economics must be looked at from 
the standpoint of what does and what does not constitute 
true “ value,” that is, of what does and what does not con- 
tribute to the ultimate good of man. He includes, there- 
fore, in his “political economy” many departments of 
human effort not included in the previous “commercial 
economy,” as he insists that the science of the old econ- 
omists should be called. In thus broadening the basis of 
discussion, and giving a new significance to the term 
“value,” Ruskin did a real service for the economic 
thought of the future. 

His most popular book, Sesame and Lilies, was in part a 
side-product of his thinking on political economy. In the 
first division of the book, entitled “King’s Treasuries,” he 
holds up to censure England’s absorption in worldly suc- 
cess, as opposed to spiritual success. To the “gospel of 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


339 


His Last 
Years. 


getting-on,” which depends for its appealing power upon 
the idea that money constitutes the only real “ value,” he 
opposes the gospel of spiritual wealth, especially as depos- 
ited in books, those King’s Treasuries which are the real 
centre of the realm of “ value.” The second part, “ Queen’s 
Garden,” is Ruskin’s contribution to the “woman prob- 
lem” of the century, the theme being the same as that of 
Tennyson's Princess. Sesame and Lilies is written in a 
style of wonderful strength and richness. It affords per- 
haps the best single example of its author’s mastery over 
the manifold chords of prose expression. 

As he went on in years, Ruskin’s sympathy went out more 
and more to the oppressed and unjustly treated of this world ; 
and he spent a large part of his time and energy, 
as well as the bulk of his fortune, in attempting 
to help the working classes by word and deed. After his 
removal in 1872 to Brantwood, in Wordsworth’s country 
among the English lakes, his chief connection with the out- 
side world was through a series of letters to working-men, 
entitled Fors Clavigera, which contain some of his ripest 
teaching, as well as much humorous and sweet-minded 
familiar talk. In Fors Clavigera first appeared his au- 
tobiography, Prceterita , where a delightfully naive and 
candid account is given of his boyhood and youth. He 
died in 1899. 

Ruskin combined many gifts and qualities : a subtle in- 
tellect, a nervous system which vibrated intensely to im- 
pressions of beauty and ugliness, great moral ardor, marked 
impatience and dogmatism, and a marvellous power of 
prose expression. His style is based on the HisStyle 
prose of the English Bible, modified by the 
religious writers of the seventeenth century, especially 
by the florid style of Jeremy Taylor ; and it is enriched by 
a unique gift of description, lyrical in movement and 
splendid in color. His best descriptive passages, for ex- 
ample the famous dithyramb on St. Mark’s cathedral in 


340 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Stones of Venice , that on the Falls of Schaffhausen, in 
Modern Painters , or that on the Rhone at Geneva, in Prce- 
terita, are among the capital examples of ornate prose in 
English. His style is as markedly romantic, in its emo- 
tional quality and its search after beauty, as Arnold’s is 
classical, in its subordination of emotion to intellect, and 
in its effort to secure clearness at any cost. 

In the use to which he put his powers, Ruskin shows the 
strong sociological drift of the Victorian era. The first 
half of his life was taken up with the effort to vivify and 
spiritualize the aesthetic perceptions of his countrymen, 
an effort parallel with that of Arnold to combat the 
sloth of their intellect, with that of Carlyle to make 
more sincere and valiant their personal character, and 
with that of Newman (whom we shall presently consider) 
to arouse their religious imagination. The latter half of 
his life was taken up with a protest against modern 
civilization, and with a search after some better basis of 
society than the present commercial -one. Instead, how- 
ever, of looking forward for this ideal, he looked backward ; 
he believed that the only salvation for the world lay in a 
reversion to medisevalism, or at least to some features of 
mediaevalism. In this respect he connects himself not only 
with the general stream of romantic thought, but especially 
with the great religious movement of the second quarter of 
the century, known as the “ Tractarian " or ee Oxford 
Movement.” 

The Oxford Movement, the effect of which on Arnold 
has been already noted, constitutes one of the most inter- 
The Oxford esting chapters in the spiritual history of the 
Movement. century. It was a concerted attempt on the 
part of a few young Oxford men, re-enforced later by 
numerous adherents, to reclaim the Church of England 
from the torpor and deadness into which it had fallen, and 
to give it once more the poetry, the mystic symbolism, and 
the spiritual charm, which had characterized the Catholic 


THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 


341 


Church in the Middle Ages. The original inspiration 
of the movement was given by John Keble (1792-1866), 
author of The Christian Year , after Herbert's Temple the 
best book of devotional verse in English. The greatest 
force in the spiritual revolution, however, was John 
Henry Newman, afterward Cardinal Newman (1801- 


1890). 

In 1833, Newman, then a fellow of Oriel College and vicar 
of St. Mary's, the University church of Oxford, took a trip 
to Italy ahd Sicily, in the course of which the 
vague feeling of his mission to redeem the Eng- his Religious 
lish Church began to solidify into a firm resolve. Hlstory * 

At Palermo, as he lay dangerously ill of a fever, he kept 
exclaiming, “ I shall not die, I have a work to do." Sail- 
ing from Palermo to Marseilles in an orange-boat, he was 
becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio, and here he wrote the 
famous hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light." Upon his return 
he began a series of “ four-o'clock sermons " at St. Mary's, 
during which he gradually and almost unconsciously drifted 
away from the Anglican and toward the Catholic Church. 
In 1842, he withdrew from Oxford, with several young fol- 
lowers, to Littlemore, where for three years he led a life of 
prayer, fasting, and monastic seclusion ; and where, in 1845, 
he was received by Father Dominic into the Boman Church. 
His conversion was a tremendous shock to English church- 
men, and led to endless attack and recrimination. At last, 
in reply to a charge of hypocrisy made by Charles Kingsley, 
Newman wrote an account of his religious life previous to his 
entering the Catholic Church, entitled Apologia The 
pro Vita Sua. The exquisite sincerity of this “ A P 0l0 £ ia -” 
confession revolutionized the popular estimate of Newman, 
and made him henceforth an object of veneration even to 
those who differed from him most bitterly on theological 
questions. In 1878 he was made cardinal by Pope Leo 
XIII.; and twelve years later he died at the Oratory of St. 
Philip Neri, Edgbaston. 


342 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Newman’s prose style is characterized at its best by an 
unobtrusive distinction, and by a kind of aerial transpar- 
Newman’s enc y in comparison with which even Arnold’s 
Prose style. p rose appears slightly dense. Although Arnold’s 
meaning is always perfectly clear, it reaches us, so to speak, 
through a resisting medium ; we are conscious of his man- 
ner. Newman, it may almost be said, has no manner, or 
at least his manner is so completely one with his matter 
that it passes unobserved ; his words convey his meaning 
as ether conveys light. If Arnold is as clear as crystal, 
Newman is as clear as mountain-air. This quality of style, 
by virtue of which it incorporates itself in meaning, and 
becomes, as it were, invisible, is the highest attainable qual- 
ity ; and Newman, in certain passages especially of his 
Apologia and his Idea of a University , has perhaps come 
nearer than any prose-writer of this century in England, 
to the type of perfect prose. 

Newman was a writer almost by accident. He was essen- 
tially a leader of men, an ecclesiastical prince, who used 
literature as an instrument of his rule. But he was also a 
mystic and a poet, gifted with a literary power of the most 
His influence winning and magnetic kind. His influence 
the L preraph- e : u P on pure literature has therefore been great, 
aeiites. His mediaeval cast of mind, his passionate per- 
ception of the beauty of the symbolism embodied in the 
mediaeval church, united with Buskin’s devotion to medi- 
aeval art to influence a remarkable group of young painters 
and poets, known as the “ Preraphaelites.” The “ Pre- 
raphaelite movement” was in its essence an attempt to 
respiritualize art and poetry, kindred with the attempt 
of the “ Oxford movement” to respiritualize the English 
church. 

The “ Preraphaelite Brotherhood ” was strictly not a lit- 
erary, but an artistic organization, consisting of a number 
of young painters and sculptors banded together for the 
avowed purpose of redeeming English art from convention- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


343 


ality, and of recalling it to nature. They took as their 
models those early Italian painters preceding Raphael, who 
had treated the most mystical of religious themes with 
simple-hearted realism. For subjects the Pre- 
raphaelites went back to the Middle Ages, and leiiteSove-’ 
their work took on the mystical, allegorical, and ment * 
religious character inseparable from medieval thought. 
A kind of naive earnestness and simplicity of treatment, 
with a mystical and intangible poetry of conception, were 
the dominant qualities in the work of these young enthusi- 
asts, who took their mission very seriously, as a “holy war 
and crusade against the age.” Several members of the 
Brotherhood were poets as well as painters and sculptors ; 
and there grew, out of the artistic movement a literary 
one, which found its first expression in a little magazine 
called “The Germ,” published for a short time during 
1850. In “ The Germ ” appeared the early work of two 
poets who best represent this peculiar renaissance of nine- 
teenth century poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William 
Morris. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in London in 1828. His 
father was an Italian patriot who had taken refuge in Eng- 
land from political persecution ; his mother Rogsett . . 
was of mixed Italian and English blood. Dante Youth and 
Gabriel was the eldest of four children, of whom Early Poetry * 
two others attained distinction in literature ; William 
Michael as a critic, Christina as a lyrical poet, gifted be- 
yond any English woman except Mrs. Browning with the 
poetic instinct, and outranking even her in delicate and 
spontaneous melody. At nineteen Rossetti adopted the 
career of painter ; and a year later he wrote the poem 
which perhaps best illustrates the Preraphaelite movement 
on its literary side, “ The Blessed Damosel.” 

The Blessed Damosel, wearing the “ white rose of Mary’s 
gift,” and holding the mystic lilies, leans from the “gold 
bar of Heaven,” yearning for her earthly lover, and pict- 


344 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


uring to herself the time when she shall lead him with 
her among the celestial groves and by the living waters 
“ The Blessed of God. The sights and sounds of Heaven 
Damosei.” are i ma g e( j f or th in the poem with a concrete- 
ness which would be startling if it were not so solemnized 
by spiritual meaning, and so freighted with spiritual awe. 
From time to time, as the poem progresses, our minds are 
led out from among the shadowy landscapes and the in- 
dwelling spirits of Paradise, down through illimitable star 
spaces, to where upon earth the lover sits, hearing in the 
autumnal rustle of the leaves the feet of his beloved, as 
she tries to reach him down the echoing stairs of the sky. 
Besides the touching emotion of the poem, the wonderful 
beauty and reach of its imagery, it has a melody sweeter 
and more sensitive than Rossetti ever attained afterward. 

The union of simplicity and concreteness with spiritu- 
ality, which makes this poem typical of the Preraphaelite 
aims in both poetry and painting, appears equally in an- 
other early poem of Rossetti's, “ My Sister's Sleep." The 
strained stillness and suspense of a death-chamber, the 
anguish and holy fortitude of a mother in the presence of 
her loss, are given with a passionate reserve and a tender 
realism which make this the second, if not the first, of 
Rossetti’s poems. In connection with these early pieces, 
should be read “ The Portrait," a love poem of Rossetti's 
later years, where we see the human heart of the poet 
once more at its strongest and sweetest. 

A considerable portion of Rossetti's verse was written in 
his early life, but only a few poems were then published. 
Later Life thirty-second year he married a Miss 

and Poetry. Siddall, whose rare type of beauty he has im- 
mortalized in the best known of his pictures, the “ Beata* 
Beatrix." Two years after the marriage, his wife died ; 
and in despair at his loss, Rossetti placed in her coffin 
all his unpublished writings. They remained buried until 
1869, when they were exhumed by his friends, and pub- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


345 


lished the following year. This volume of 1870, another 
published eleven years after, and a volume of transla- 
tions from the early Italian poets, entitled Dante and his 
Circle , constitute the whole of Rossetti's poetical output. 
After his wife's death he withdrew more and more into 
himself, until he became a complete recluse. Intense 
brooding upon his loss, added to the disastrous effects of 
the drug which he took as a relief from insomnia, made 
his life a tragedy only relieved by the creative play of his 
mind, which continued to embody itself in pictures and 
poems of strange and sometimes morbid beauty. 

Rossetti made several attempts in the ballad, two of 
which are remarkable, “ Sister Helen " and “ The King's 
Tragedy." Sister Helen deals with the medi- “Sister 
aeval superstition that if a waxen image, shaped Helen.” 
to represent some living person, were melted before a fire 
with incantations and unholy prayers, that person's life 
would dwindle and go out, as the image was destroyed. 
The speakers in the poem are a young woman who is 
melting a waxen image of her false lover, and her little 
brother, who sits at the window, looking out upon the 
wintry landscape to report to her the coming of the friends 
of the dying man to plead for mercy. The unconscious- 
ness and vague apprehension of the child are wonderfully 
used to heighten the atmosphere of vengeful passion and 
ghostly horror in which the poem moves. The effect is 
heightened also by a burden or refrain, subtly varied to 
serve as a kind of Greek chorus to the action, commenting 
upon it in transcendental terms. “ The King's Tragedy " 
is, so far as virility and dramatic power are concerned, 
Rossetti's masterpiece ; the blank verse poem called “The 
Confession," written under Browning's influence, should 
be read with “ The King's Tragedy " as further illustra- 
tion of Rossetti's power to handle dramatic material. 

The House of Life, in the final form which it took in 
the volume of 1881, consists of a hundred and one sonnets. 


34G 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


dealing with the poet’s love-history and loss. The lan- 
guage and the imagery are here more elaborate than in 
“The House Rossetti’s earlier work, and the music more con- 
of Life.” scious and artful. We miss in The House of Life 
the spontaneity and simple charm of the early lyrics, 
though in recompense we gain the pleasure which comes 
from hearing a complex musical instrument played with 
mature mastership. 

As a whole, Rossetti’s poetry is marked by great pictu- 
resqueness and visual beauty. It is “ painter’s poetry,” in 
that its appeal is constantly to the eye. Music it has too, 
but the tendency to load itself with elaborate detail often 
defeats the music, and makes of the verse a kind of poet- 
ical tapestry, stiff with emblazoned images. Where it is 
not the poetry of a painter it is thq poetry of a prisoner 
and a recluse. Outdoor nature, the common life of men, 
appear in it seldom. In the main, its atmosphere is close 
and heavily perfumed, its emotion somewhat morbid and 
cloying. It is the poetry of a nature born for the generous 
sunlight and color of Italy, and compelled to build a 
dream-world amid the chill fog and bitter smoke of 
London. 

William Morris displays, much more completely than 
Rossetti, the reversion to the Middle Ages which charac- 
Morris terized the Preraphaelite group of poets and 
painters ; though his work is lacking in the 
mysticism and spiritual grace which is their second great 
peculiarity. Morris was born in 1834, and his youth was 
spent at Walthamstow, on the borders of Epping Forest, 
the tangled glades and rough hornbeam thiekets of which, 
.in places then almost as primeval as in Robin Hood’s day, 
may have had something to do with determining the 
romantic bent of his mind. He went up to Oxford after 
the neo-catholic movement under Keble and Newman 
was over, but while the excitement produced by it was 
still in the air. The tendency of this movement to throw 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


347 


the mind back upon mediaeval modes of thought and feel- 
ing, falling in with Morris's native sympathies and rein- 
forced by his acquaintanceship with Rossetti, determined 
the character of his first volume of verse. The 
Defence of Guenevere. In this volume, many fenced? 6 
phases of medievalism are touched upon with Guenevere *” 
power : the joyous adventurousness of the knightly life 
finds a bright celebration in “ The Day before Crecy " 
and te The Gilliflower of Gold"; in “ The Haystack in 
the Floods " and “ Shameful Death " are pictured the 
darker sides of mediaeval existence, its violence and ter- 
rible ferocity ; in “ The Sailing of the Sword " and “ The 
Blue Closet " still other aspects, more purely picturesque 
and fanciful, are given with a rapid and brilliant touch. 

In his thirty-third year (1867), Morris published a long 
narrative poem. The Life and Death of Jason. Here he 
went back to ancient Greece for his story ; but his treatment 
of his theme is thoroughly mediaeval, and the poem is writ- 
ten in the same kind of diffuse, soft-colored, gently flow- 
ing verse in which the Norman-French trouveres had sung 
the interminable adventures of their knights and paladins. 
Three years later, in 1870, appeared Morris's masterpiece. 
The Earthly Paradise, a collection of verse- 4 The 
narratives held together by an ingenious scheme, Earthly 
analogous to that which Chaucer used in bind- 
ing together his Canterbury Tales. A band of Northmen, 
sailing westward in their viking ships, are cast ashore upon 
the island of Atlantis, the earthly paradise of which the 
Greek poets dreamed. Here they find dwelling a fortunate 
race of men, who in times long past have come hither 
from Greece and Asia Minor. The new-comers remain 
through the changing seasons of a year, telling stories of 
their northern land, and listening to the tales which the 
islanders have brought from their ancient home. What- 
ever are the sources of the stories, whether classical, west- 
ern, northern, or oriental, the style in which they are 


348 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


written is always that of the mediaeval romances ; even the 
metres employed are those familiar to Chaucer and the 
French trouveres. The Earthly Paradise is the work of a 
born teller of stories for the story's sake ; and it is to be 
enjoyed very simply, with the same child-likeness of inter- 
est which went to its making. 

During his later life Morris was deeply interested in Ice- 
landic myth and legend. He translated the saga of Volsung, 
the greatest of northern stories, in a pseudo-archaic diction 
of his own contrivance. He also employed this curious 
style of speech in a long series of prose-romances, dealing 
with the primitive life of our northern ancestors ; the most 
Prose _ notable are perhaps The House of the Wolfing s, 
Romances. Rj ie Roots of the Mountains , and The Story of 
the Glittering Plain. In them he succeeded in importing 
into English literature the spirit of the northern saga, not, 
to be sure, without some artificiality, but nevertheless with 
great picturesqueness and romantic charm. 

Literature was with Morris only one of many activities. 
His was a life of ceaseless labor iii many fields of indus- 
try. He began life as an architect, abandoned this career 

for painting, drifted at length into the design- 
Morris’s 1 07 © © 

industrial ing and manufacturing of furniture, wall-paper, 

and textile fabrics, and toward the close of his 
life turned his exhaustless energy into artistic printing 
and book-binding. He worked always in the spirit of a 
mediaeval master-craftsman, to whom beauty and honesty 
of workmanship were a religion. His sincerity, versatility, 
and skill made an epoch in the history of household deco- 
ration ; and as the impulse given by him has broadened and 
popularized itself, the surroundings of ordinary domestic 
life have been beautified for multitudes. 

Morris's industrial experiences gradually led him to the 
conviction that the bases of modern commercialism were 
false, and he threw himself with heart and soul into the 
socialistic movement then beginning to gain headway in 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


349 


England. Two of his romances. News from Nowhere and 
The Dream of John Ball, are attempts to imagine a new 
organization of society ; and some of his later His 
poems are chants of prophecy and hope for the Socialism, 
longed-for era of social justice. In the prelude to The 
Earthly Paradise he calls himself “ the idle singer of an 
empty day 99 ; but this “idle singer” was a man who spent 
the greater portion of his time and strength working in 
shop and designing-room to make the world as it is a more 
livable place, and who, as experience thus gained gave him 
prompting, tried with all earnestness to indicate what 
seemed to him a higher basis for the social life of man. 

The Catholic reactionism of Newman, the medievalism 
of Ruskin and the Preraphaelites, may be thought of as an 
attempt to escape from the hard material views of life 
forced upon the age by modern science. A somewhat sim- 
ilar attempt to escape from the overburdening moral seri- 
ousness and the too insistent ethical purpose of Victorian 
literature, may be traced in the early poetry of Algernon 
Charles Swinburne, especially in his first series Swinburne : 
of Poems and Ballads (1866). In these he de- etry E o?Re?°" 
liberately and indeed ostentatiously repudi- volt * 
ated those standards of feeling and conduct which the 
modern world cherishes as its hardest-won heritage from 
nineteen centuries of Christianity. He went back for his 
inspiration to paganism, and too often not to the vigor- 
ous early periods of paganism, but to its later ones, when 
men, callous or indifferent to the moral issues of life, 
sought to lose themselves in feverish self-indulgence, or to 
gain a ghostly solace from broodings upon death and fate 
alid morbid love. In his later work, however, Swinburne 
has struck a more manly note, finding his in- His Late r 
spiration in the ideal of freedom, personal and Themes ' 
political ; in his love of the sea, the poetry of which he has 
given with unexampled beauty and force ; in an enthusiasm, 
wholesouled and generous, for great art ; and in an exquis- 


350 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ite perception of the beauty and pathos of child-life. Bed- 
sides his voluminous lyrical work, he has essayed epic nar- 
rative in Tristram of Lyonesse ; and he has produced a 
number of dramas, some, like Chastelard and Marino 
Faliero, being studies in the Elizabethan manner, others, 
as Atalanta in Calydon and Erechtheus, being written 
on the Greek model. 

Whatever may be the intellectual or moral value of Swin- 
burne’s poetry, it is certain that as a technical master of 
ms verse- verse, as a musician in words, he is very great. 
Mastery. Especially in the more rapid and impetuous 
rhythms he has shown himself able to push out the boun- 
daries of his art, and to enter regions of verse-music un- 
known before. For a union of splendor and speed” his 
poetic style is unequalled by any other poet of the Victo- 
rian age. His faults are those of mannerism and device, 
of diffuseness and over-ornamentation, of a tendency to 
clothe trivial thoughts in sweeping and resounding phrase. 

His excellences are present in the highest degree, and 
his faults almost absent, in his masterpiece, Atalanta in 
“ Atalanta Calydon (1865), which ranks almost on a level 
m Calydon. ^] ie damson Agonistes of Milton as an at- 

tempt to give in English verse the essential form and spirit 
of Greek drama. The subject of Swinburne’s poem is 
the hunting of the wild boar in Calydon, the love of Me- 
leager for the maiden-huntress Atalanta, and his death at 
the hands of his mother. The action moves with stately 
swiftness, in obedience to the strict canons of Greek form ; 
the pathos is deep and genuine ; and the music, especially 
in the choruses, is splendid in range and sweep. 

Swinburne is the last of the Victorian poets, the latest 
survivor of the era which began with the appearance of 
Tennyson and Browning in the third decade of the cen- 
tury. As we look back over the poetry of this era, and 
indeed over the poetry of the whole nineteenth century, 
we observe in it an overwhelming preponderance of the 


THE NINETEENTH CENTUHY 


351 


lyric and the narrative over the dramatic form. At the 
same time we cannot fail to be impressed by the fact that 
the poets of the century have made continual efforts to 
reclaim the drama for poetic uses. Wordsworth and Cole- 
ridge both made essays in the dramatic form ; Shelley's 
Cenci and Byron's Manfred are among their most serious 
efforts ; Keats was engaged upon a drama at the time of 
his death ; Tennyson devoted nearly twenty years of his 
life to dramatic writing ; Browning made repeated experi- 
ments in the dramatic form, some of them of the greatest 
novelty and suggestiveness ; finally, Swinburne has returned 
again and again to the drama, until far the larger bulk of 
his work is in that medium. Yet all these attempts, when 
considered from an absolute point of view, must be deemed 
failures. The place which drama naturally claims has been 
usurped by prose fiction. . The fundamental temper of the 
century, and its chief intellectual interests, have made 
against the effort to lift drama to its old position, as the 
great popular exponent of human life. 

Nevertheless, that position is one which it must ulti- 
mately again assume ; for the drama is by its nature the 
most vital and powerful instrument at the disposal of the 
worker in imaginative matter. During the last twenty 
years of the nineteenth century, moreover, signs have not 
been lacking that the ever-baffled and ever-renewed strug- 
gle of the last hundred years to create a new poetic drama, 
has been full of significance for the future. There are 
good grounds for believing that the course of poetry in the 
next half-century will be in a dramatic direction; and that 
the tentative experiments of the last two generations, to- 
ward the presentation of modern life and thought in the 
noblest of literary forms, will bear fruit in accomplishment. 

While tracing, in this chapter and the preceding, the 
literary history of the nineteenth century, we have omitted 
aU but casual mention of that form of literature which has 


352 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


been most popular, most widely cultivated, and perhaps 
most influential of all — the novel. We must now retrace 
our steps, take up the novel as it was handed on from the 
eighteenth century, and consider its manifold development 
during the last hundred years. 


CHAPTER XY 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY : THE NOVEL 

The novel of the nineteenth century is broader and more 
complex than that of the eighteenth, by virtue of the 
greater breadth and complexity of the life which it has 
essayed to picture. The three departments of fiction, the 
romance, the realistic study of manners, and the story 
with a purpose, persist, but the range of each is vastly 
extended. The increase in knowledge of the past and of 
strange lands which the century has brought, has thrown 
open to the romanticist two great sources of material. 
The extension of the reading public, and the growth of 
curiosity concerning the circumstances of man’s life under 
varying conditions, have caused the realistic novel to widen 
its scope. The world of fiction in the eighteenth century 
is a small one ; its characters are, with a few notable ex- 
ceptions, drawn from the leisure class and its 
dependents ; they have usually no business in Se e iuneteenth 
life beyond carrying on the action of the story. Century * 

But in the nineteenth century we have novels which deal 
specifically with the life of the sea, the army, crime, sport, 
commerce, toil, politics, and the church ; and with the 
special difficulties, dangers, and temptations which each 
career involves. Finally, the deeper thought of the cen- 
tury, bearing fruit in rapid social changes, has given to the 
novel of purpose greater dignity and power. The attempt 
to reform government and institutions, the labor move- 
ment of which Chartism was one manifestation, the so- 
called conflict between science and faith, all have been 
reflected in novels, and have in turn been influenced by 

353 


354 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


them. As the novel has thus gained in general scope, the 
three departments of fiction have lost in large measure 
their exclusive character. The romancer, in using mate- 
rial gathered in study or travel, has come to have some- 
thing of the conscientiousness of the realist. The realist 
has found romantic possibilities in actual life ; the advance 
of science, leading to startling discoveries in the physical 
and mental world, has given him means of arousing 
wonder and terror, more effective than those afforded by 
gothic machinery. And finally the novelist with a purpose 
has found in the realistic picture of things as they are, 
one of the most potent forces of revolution. 

The work of Miss Edgeworth (1767-1849) forms an in- 
teresting link between the novel of the eighteenth century 
Maria Edge- anc ^ that of the nineteenth. She was a follower 
worth. 0 f Miss Burney in the effort to paint contem- 
porary society. Like her predecessor, she shared in the 
rather shallow social purpose of the eighteenth century ; 
her general aim, as set forth in the introduction to her 
novel Patronage , “the inculcation of simplicity and mo- 
rality in an artificial and recklessly frivolous age,” is one 
which Addison would have applauded. But *her purpose 
is often more definite than this ; and in several particulars 
her work suggests the course which the novel was to take 
in the future. Her long residence in Ireland interested 
her in social conditions in that island, and she wrote ear- 
nestly to improve them. The Absentee is both a satire 
against the Irish landlord who ruins himself in London 
society, and a moving picture of the evils which his folly 
brings on his native land. In Ireland, too, Miss Edge- 
worth had an opportunity to study life in what to her read- 
ers were remote conditions. Her first and best story, the 
little masterpiece called Castle Rackrent (1800), is the 
account of the fortunes of a decaying family, as seen through 
the shrewd eyes and told by the witty Irish tongue of an 
old servant. It has the distinction of having suggested 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


355 


to Sir Walter Scott that true local color could be made 
as effective a background as false, and that'the romantic 
interest could be united with an effort to portray life as it is. 

The wide range of Miss Edgeworth's work emphasizes 
by contrast the narrow field occupied by Jane Austen 
(1775-1817), whose novels deal with life in the country, 
where the traditions of the eighteenth century lingered 
undisturbed. In Miss Austen's case, as earlier in Field- 
ing's and later in Thackeray’s, the realistic impulse was in 
part a reaction from romantic or sentimental views of life, 
and first expressed itself as burlesque. Two of her early 
stories, Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility , she 
wrote with the obvious purpose of opposing to 
the impossible situations and strained emotions Jane Austen ‘ 
of Mrs. Radcliffe and her school, a humorously sensible 
picture of life and love as they are. From the outset Miss 
Austen limited her view to the world that she knew, and 
the influences that she saw at work. She was the daughter 
of a clergyman, and except for an occasional visit to a 
watering-place like Bath or Lyme, she spent her youth in 
a country parish. Her acquaintance included country fam- 
ilies, clergymen, and naval officers, — for her brothers were 
in the navy. The chief business of these people, as Miss 
Austen saw them, was attention to social duties ; and their 
chief interest was matrimony. This world Miss Austen 
represents in her novels ; outside of it she never steps. 
And even in this petty world she takes account chiefly 
of its pettiness. The great things of life, passion and 
moral purpose, the interests of the artist, the lover, the 
saint, may as well be presented on a small stage as on a 
large one, as well amid the society of a cathedral city as in 
London ; but these things did not enter into Miss Austen's 
experience, and she had no great insight or imaginative 
sympathy to carry her beyond her own observation. There 
is scarcely any feeling for external nature in her stories, 
except in Persuasion , the latest of them. There is 


356 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


little passion ; the language of emotion is usually forced 
and conventional. “ Sense is the foundation on which 
Her Limita everything good may be based,” she says in 
tions. Sense and Sensibility. Her view of evil is 

superficial, for her attitude of satiric observation left her 
insensitive to the significance of moral effort. One sus- 
pects that her estimate of life was not very different from 
that expressed by Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice ; 

For what do we live but to make sport for our neigh- 
bors and to laugh at them in our turn ?” 

But if her range was thus limited, within it she was 
supreme. Absolutely sure of her material, undistracted by 
Her external interests, she wrote with a singular 

Excellence. f ree dom from uncertainty ; and her novels have, 
in consequence, an exactness of structure and a symmetry 
of form which are to be found more often in French lit- 
erature than in English. Of this precision Pride and 
Prejudice is an admirable example. There the plot is the 
chief interest ; simple, but pervading the entire book ; con- 
trolling every incident, but itself depending for its out- 
come upon the development or revelation of the principal 
characters. Surrounding these characters is the world 
of provincial folk which Miss Austen handled with such 
brilliancy, — cynical Mr. Bennet and his fatuous wife ; 
Mary Bennet, the pedant, and Lydia, the flirt ; Mr. Col- 
lins, the type of pretentious conceit, and Sir William 
Lucas, of feeble dulness. These “ humors ” Miss Austen 
develops chiefly in speech, by her wonderful faculty of say- 
ing the thing that belongs to the character at the mo- 
ment. Not onJy is the proper sentiment caught, but the 
turn of phrase, the manner, almost the modulation of 
the voice. And not only is this true of the limited 
characters who react always in the same way ; but also 
in the sustained scenes between the more developed per- 
sons, where the dialogue is more highly charged. Miss 
Austen shows dramatic power of the highest order. One 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


357 


of the best of these scenes is that between Elizabeth Ben- 
net and Lady Catherine de Burgh, in which Elizabeth 
like a good swordsman, light on her feet and ever ready, 
completely disarms her lumbering opponent. Miss Aus- 
ten’s later stories, Mansfield Park and Emma , are longer 
and slightly more elaborate than Pride and Prejudice, but 
in them the essentials of her art are still the same ; a well- 
defined story, growing naturally out of the influence of 
character on character, and developed in the midst of a 
society full of the mild humors of provincial life. 

Miss Austen shows to the full the realist’s tendency to 
accept the world in an ironical spirit, and to find in it such 
amusement as it offers. The romantic impulse to seek for 
enjoyment in a world of greater interest or of greater op- 
portunity for imagination, is brilliantly represented in the 
works of the greatest of English romancers. Sir Walter 
Scott. 

Scott began his career as a novelist late in life. It was 
not until he was forty-three that, finding his vogue as a 
poet diminishing before Byron’s popularity, sir waiter 
he finished a tale that he had begun some nine Scott * 
years before. This was published anonymously in 1814 
under the name Waverley, a title which was applied to the 
long series of novels which followed. Some of these, like 
Guy Mannering (1815), The Antiquary (1816), The Heart 
of Midlothian (1818), deal with the past of Scotland ; 
others, like Ivanhoe (1820), Kenilworth (1821), The Fort- 
unes of Nigel (1822) are concerned with English history ; 
several, like Quentin Dunoard (1823) and The Talisman 
(1825) transfer the scene to the Continent. In 1826 a 
printing house, of which Scott was a member, failed for 
£117,000, the whole of which debt he felt bound to assume. 
He wrote his latest books to get money to discharge this 
obligation, and had actually paid more than half when he 
died in 1832. The rest was paid by the sale of the copy- 
rights on his earlier books. 


358 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Scott’s life was a blending of the old and the new. He 
tried to be both a feudal lord and a modern business man, 
and both attempts are curiously connected with his liter- 
ary career. He wrote partly for the pleasure of creating 
in fiction the feudal ideal that he sought to realize in his 
life at Abbotsford, partly for the money with which to 
sustain that experiment. Part of his success in his own day 
must be accounted for by the fact that his vital interests 
were those which his fellow-men could comprehend. Scott 
Scott’s was n °t a romanticist in the sense in which 
Romanticism. Coleridge was, or Shelley. He did not desire 
spiritual freedom ; he was not conscious of the trammels of 
an ordered, conventional life ; he had no dislike of the 
political and social world as it existed, no leanings toward 
revolution. But on the other hand, he had in his blood an 
ardent love for Scotland, and an intimate sympathy with 
Scotchmen ; he had, too, a fascinated view toward the past. 
Thus he represented the simple, permanent elements- of ro- 
manticism, the elements which his public were prepared to 
accept ; and thus to an audience which neglected Words 
worth and flouted Shelley, Scott became the prophet of a 
new literary faith. 

His native land and its people Scott learned to know at 
first hand, in his frequent journeys through the Border 
Country and the Highlands. He was the first British 
novelist to make a background actually studied from nat- 
Hisuseot ure a pervading and essential element in his 
scene. work. His descriptions of scenery are, it is 
true, old-fashioned in method, unreasonably long and full 
of detail ; but they have an exact and vivid realism that 
goes far to reward the reader’s patience. Moreover, the 
frequency with which the place determines the event 
shows that in Scott’s drama scene was a vital element, 
not a mere decorative drop-curtain which interrupts the 
action. 

The natural background in Scott’s work is, however, less 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


359 


wonderful than the human. It is noteworthy that, even as 
early as Waverley, his first novel, Scott recognized his chief 
strength to lie in his knowledge of Scotch types. After 
some hesitation at the outset of the story, he starts his 
hero for Scotland, and plunges him into a society com- 
posed of Baron Bradwardine, Laird Balmawhapple, and 
Baillie Macwheeble, with David Gellatley and Old Janet 
for dependents. These local types, which Scott His 
drew so abundantly, are treated broadly for the Characters, 
humor and the pathos of humanity warped by circum- 
stances into a hundred fantastic forms, but capable of 
sometimes throwing itself into an attitude of noble disin- 
terestedness, of dignified endurance, or of tragic despair. 
When the historic drama of the rising of 1745, which draws 
Waverley into its sweep, has played itself out, and the pale 
love story has been tamely concluded, the figure that re- 
mains with us as we close the book, is that of Evan Dhu, 
the humble follower of the Highland chief Vich Ian Vohr, 
standing at the condemnation of his master, and pledging 
himself and six of the clan to die in his stead. “ If the 
Saxon gentlemen are laughing,” he said, “ because a poor 
man, such as me, thinks my life or the life of six of my 
degree is worth that of Vich Ian Vohr, it’s like enough 
they may be very right ; but if they laugh because they 
think I would not keep my word, and come back to re- 
deem him, they ken neither the heart of a Hielandman, 
nor the honour of a gentleman.” Among such types as 
these we look for Scott’s greatest characters : Edie Ochil- 
tree in The Antiquary, Baillie Jar vie in Rob Roy , Peter 
Peebles in Redgauntlet, and many more who stand out 
from the novels as complete and substantive figures in 
which the race of Scotchmen has expressed itself forever. 
Only once, however, did Scott trust entirely to this ele- 
ment of native strength. In The Heart of Midlothian, he 
dispenses altogether with the aristocratic heroine, throws 
aside the conventional plot, and gives us instead the story 


360 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


of Jeanie Deans, one of the most humanly moving to be 
found in all fiction. 

It is, moreover, from local types which he knew, that 
Scott derives his most impressive appeals to the sense of 
terror and mystery, already awakened in the reading public 
by the gothic romancers. The fantastic figures which start 
out of the background, Madge Wildfire in The Heart of 
Midlothian , Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering, and Norna 
of the Fitful Head in The Pirate , constitute far more pow- 
erful romantic elements than are afforded by his rather 
timid use of the supernatural. 

The material which Scott gained at first hand from the 
Scotland of his own day, he supplemented by a very dili- 
gent and human, if somewhat unscientific, antiquarianism. 
In his childhood he delighted to hear of the past from sur- 
vivors of it. Of his mother’s conversation he wrote, “ If I 
His Love of have been able to do anything in the way of 
the Past. painting the past times it is very much from the 
studies with which she presented me.” Later he drew on 
old books and letters to supply what was lacking in per- 
sonal tradition. Such intercourse with the past widened 
his knowledge of men, and gave him material for his his- 
torical portraits. It also provided him with many of those 
incidents, by means of which he gives to a character or to 
a scene its final reality. Scott was often slipshod in put- 
ting his stories together as wholes, but he was consummate 
in his power to place his characters in a picturesquely 
significant setting, and to draw from the interplay between 
his persons and his scene action so appropriate to the dra- 
ms use of matic situation that it seems inevitable. A re- 
incidenf. markable instance of this faculty occurs in Old 
Mortality , where Morton visits Burley in the cave reached 
by a single tree-trunk bridging the chasm of a waterfall. 
As Morton approaches he hears the shouts and screams of 
the old Covenanter, in whom religious fury has become in- 
sanity ; and at length he sees the fearful figure of Burley 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


361 


in strife with the fiends which beset him. The effect of 
threatening scenery and of the terror of madness is brought 
to a focus, as it were, at the instant when Burley sends the 
tree crashing into the abyss, leaving Morton to jump for 
his life. 

Scott's stronghold was his native land, in the period 
which he could reach by fresh tradition, that is, the cen- 
tury before his birth. Here his historical portraits are won- 
derfully definite ; and his presentation of historical move- 
ments, like that of the Covenanters or the Jacobites, as 
seen in the high light of individual experience, is full of 
insight and imagination. As he exhausted this His Use of 
material, or felt the need of stimulating his History, 
audience with variety, he went more and more into other 
fields, and relied more and more on formal history for his 
material. In his English and continental novels, literary 
inspiration and study never quite took the place of what 
was almost first-hand knowledge in the Scotch. Yet his 
treatment of Richard's crusade in The Talisman , or of 
Louis XI.'s struggle with Charles the Bold in Quentin 
Bur ward, or of Elizabeth's coquetries in Kenilworth , tes- 
tify to his power of using history to give interest and 
significance to his action and characters, or, in other 
words, of making it contributory to the art of fiction. 

Although since Scott's day nearly every novelist of note 
has attempted something in the historical field, the ro- 
mantic temper, which first commended historical material 
to the novelist, gave place, after Scott's death, to a different 
mood. Scott's romantic pictures of the feudal past were 
flattering to a people struggling, as they thought, to pre- 
serve the relics of that past from the engulfing revolution. 
But after the immediate effect of the Napoleonic War had 
passed away, new ideas began to make progress in England, 
broadening the current of English thought and life. This 
broadening is reflected in the work of two writers whose 
productions cover chronologically the middle period of the 


362 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


n 


century, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) and Edward Bul- 
wer-Lytton (1803-1873). Disraeli began his career with 
the publication of Vivian Grey (1826), in which 
Buiwer-Lyt- a new type of hero is presented, the man of the 
world, — a sign that the sinister, romantic rebel 
of Byron’s tragedies had had his day. Edward Bulwer 
began his career by a direct attack on Byronism. In 
Pelham , the Adventures of a Gentleman (1828), the hero 
is a young dandy, who learns worldly wisdom from a Ches- 
terfieldian mother, and who, armed with unlimited con- 
ceit and self-possession, brings the world to his feet. Ac- 
cording to Bulwer’s view, society is too easily conquered to 
make rebellion worth while ; and the success of his book 
proved him right. 

Bulwer’s first novels illustrate the later development of 
those gothic tendencies which had manifested themselves 
in fiction at the end of the eighteenth century as one 
symptom of the. romantic revival. In many of his novels, 
notably in Pelham and in Lucretia , he plays upon his read- 
Buiwer’s Ro- er * s sense of the terrible, by his pictures of crim- 
manticism. ju a i But ] ie infuses these pictures, as 

Dickens did a little later, with a definite purpose, treating 
his outlaws as vic tims of so ciety. Paul Clifford , for ex- 
ample, of which the hero is a highwayman, was written 
“ to draw attention to two errors in our penal institutions, 
viz. : — a vicious prison discipline and a sanguinary penal 
code.” The other prominent gothic element in Bulwer’s 
work is a pseudo-scientific use of the supernatural, of which 
Zanoni (1845) furnishes the most elaborate example. 

Naturally, with the success of Scott before him, Bulwer 
essayed the historical novel. In 1834, after elaborate prep- 
His Historical aration, he published The Last Days of Pom- 
woveis. and later Rienzi, The Last of the Bar- 

ons , and Harold; in all of these he tried, much more 
consciously than Scott, to make the novel serve the pur- 
pose of the historian. Under the impulse of Thackeray’s 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


363 


success Bulwer turned to modern life, in The Caxtons 
(1849) and My Novel (1853). His realism is relieved, 
however, by the introduction of ideal characters, which he 
touches with whimsical quality in the manner of Sterne, 
perhaps realizing that goodness is rendered ms Later 
more convincing by being made a trifle absurd. works. 
Altogether, with due deduction for the affected, the sensa- 
tional, the sentimental in Bulwer’s novels, the fact remains 
that his versatility and his long-continued energy make 
him a useful sign of the shifting literary currents during 
the middle years of the century. 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) must always be one of the 
most striking figures in the history of English literature, 
on account of the dramatic nature of his success. He 
started from the humblest position in life ; when he was 
ten years old he was at work in a blacking warehouse, 
sleeping beneath a counter, and spending his Charles 
Sundays with his family in Marshalsea Prison, Dickens, 
where his father was confined for debt. Yet before he 
was thirty he was a great writer ; and before he was forty, 
a notable public man. Ho writer in English ever gathered 
with a fuller hand the rewards of the literary calling. It 
is true, other writers have made more money, or have won 
peerages ; but none has had in his lifetime so wide and 
intensely loyal a personal following ; none has had in ad- 
dition to money, friends, and fame, the peculiar tribute 
which came to Dickens from vast audiences gathered to- 
gether, not once or twice, but hundreds of times, in scores 
of cities, to testify by “roaring seas of applause ” to his 
personal triumph. In middle life Dickens began to give 
semi-dramatic public readings from his works, and these 
grew to be his chief interest. The strain and excitement 
wore him out. It is a circumstance perhaps as tragic in its 
way as that which shadows the close of Scott’s life, that 
this personal triumph was the direct cause of Dickens’s 
death. Scott died, broken by the effort to retrieve by liter- 


364 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ature the effects of failure in life. Dickens died forty 
years later, worn out by the effort to gather in life the 
rewards of literature. 

Dickens’s peculiar triumph calls attention to the prime 
fact in his authorship, his nearness to his public. He 
began his career as a reporter, in the profession which is 
most immediately of the people. He was later an editor of 
magazines, and even, for a short time, of a great daily 
newspaper. But though necessity made him a 
ms Training. j ourna p g ^ w i s ] ie( j to be an actor. As a young 

man he tried to get a position at Covent Garden Theatre. 
For years he was the leading spirit in a famous company 
of amateurs who played in various cities of England ; and 
as we have seen, his chief interest came to be his readings. 
These two professional instincts account for much in 
Dickens’s work. As a reporter and as an editor he studied 
his public ; as an actor, he taught himself to play upon it, 
through his writings and his dramatic readings from them, 
with incomparable skill. 

It was while Dickens, then about twenty, was a reporter, 
that he began to write sketches of London life for vari- 
ous newspapers. From his success with these came, in 
1836, an engagement to write the letterpress for a series 
of cartoons representing the humors of sporting life. For 
this purpose he invented the “ Pickwick Club,” which 
at once made a popular hit. The death of the artist 
who was engaged upon the drawings left Dickens free 
to widen the scope of the adventures of the club, and 
“Pickwick °th er characters without stint. The 

Papers. * ’ complete result was a great book, formless as to 
plot, crowded with humorous figures. These figures are 
given with broadly exaggerated traits, as if Dickens had 
always in mind the cartoon which was to accompany the 
text. They talk freely, not to say inexhaustibly, and all 
differently. But the author’s chief resource is his faculty 
for bringing his caricatures into contact with the actual 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


3G5 


world, in situations that expose their oddities in high 
relief. Mr. Tupman as a lover, Mr. Winkle as a duellist 
01 a sportsman, Mr. Pickwick in a breach of promise suit 
with the Widow Bardell, the Pickwick Club contending 
with a recalcitrant horse, the Reverend Mr. Stiggins drunk 
at a temperance meeting — these incongruities are narrated 
in a style always copious, but often rapid and piquant. 

In his later novels Dickens improved on his first at- 
tempts. He continued to be a caricaturist, to rely on dis- 
tortions and exaggerations of feature or manner ; but his 
range of effects became broader, and his figures more 
significant. Micawber in David Copper field, “ waiting for 
something to turn up,” Sairy Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit , 
haunted by the mythical Mrs. Harris, Timble 
Uriah Heap, sanctimonious Pecksniff, cheerful HlsHumors - 
Mark Tapley, all have distinct individuality, yet all label 
so conveniently common attitudes and habits of mind that 
we use their names freely as categories. 

In Pickwick Dickens is purely a humorist ; in the novels 
which followed he enlarged enormously the sources of his 
power over his audience. By the use of the same method 
which he had employed in his humors, he created Hig Darker 
figures of a different sort, to excite not laughter characters, 
but loathing and terror. In the portrayal of these types 
also he gained subtlety with practice. Fagin and Sykes in 
Oliver Twist { 1838), Quilp, the dwarf, in Old Curiosity Shop 
(1841), are examples of rather crude methods of exciting 
physical horror ; monstrous as they are, they do not haunt 
the reader with the terrible suggestion of inhumanity that 
lurks behind the placid, smiling face of Mme. Defarge in 
A Tale of Two Cities (1859), as she sits in front of the guil- 
lotine, knitting, and counting the heads as they fall. In 
the stories just mentioned Dickens showed again his fer- 
tility in inventing situations, using his histrionic power as 
freely in melodrama as in farce. The behavior of Fagin 
at his trial and in prison is the conception of an actor, 


366 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


careful to make every gesture, every expression, tell on his 
audience. 

A third type of character which Dickens developed, and 
which in his time made immensely for his popularity, was 
that of the victim of society, — usually a child. The pos- 
sibilities of childhood for romance or pathos had been sug- 
gested by Shakespeare, by Fielding, and by Blake ; but 
none of these had brought children into the very centre of 
the action, or had made them highly individual. In his 
second novel, Dickens made his story centre about a child, 
Oliver Twist, and from that time forth children were ex- 
pected and necessary characters in his novels. Little Nell, 
His Humani- Florence Dombey, David Oopperfield, stand out 
tanamsm. j n ce i es tial innocence and goodness, in contrast 
with the evil creatures whose persecution they suffer for a 
season. And further, they represent in most telling form 
the complaint of the individual against society. For with 
Dickens the private cruelty which his malign characters 
inflict, is almost always connected with social wrong. Bum- 
ble's savage blow at Oliver Twist asking for more food, 
Squeers's wicked exploitation of his pupils in Nicholas 
Nicklely , are carried back and laid at the door of society. 
The championship of the individual against institutions, 
which had been a leading motive in later eighteenth cen- 
tury fiction, had been checked by the reaction against the 
French Revolution ; but in Dickens's day the “ redress of 
wrongs " had become again a great public movement. The 
workings of later romanticism had begun to be reflected in 
a popular distrust of governmental methods, a kind of 
sentimental hatred of organized authority. To this feeling 
Dickens constantly appealed. In nearly all his books there 
is a definite attack upon some legal or social evil : in Oliver 
Twist, upon the workhouse ; in Bleak House , upon the 
chancery courts ; in Little Dorrit , upon the harsh laws 
governing debt. Undoubtedly there was something theat- 
rical in Dickens's adoption of social wrong as a motive in 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


367 


fiction, but there was also much that was sincere. He had 
himself known the lot of the persecuted ; at the root of his 
zeal for reform was the memory of his own bitter child- 
hood. 

The types of character already discussed were sufficient 
to sustain the movement of Dickens’s earlier books. These 
were usually simple in structure. His favorite authors 
were Smollett and LeSage, and he seems to have been dis- 
posed to build his own novels like theirs, on 
the picaresque plan. In most of them we begin 
with the hero in childhood, and follow his personal advent- 
ures into the thick of a plot involving the popular roman- 
tic material of the day, kidnapping, murder, mob-justice, 
and other incidents of criminal life. When the author 
needs the usual characters of the novel, a pair of conven- 
tional love-makers for example, he gives us figures as weak 
and unnatural as were many of Scott’s titular heroes. In 
his later books, however, he gained the power of con- 
structing elaborate plots, and of creating characters of 
heroic dignity and tragic intensity, such as Sidney Car- 
ton in The Tale of Two Cities, and Lady Dedlock in 
Bleak House (1853). These are the most enduringly 
powerful of his novels, but they are not those upon which 
his fame rests. Dickens is remembered not as a dramatic 
artist in the novel form, but as a showman of wonderful 
resources. He is master of a vast and fascinating stage, 
crowded with farcical characters ; with grotesque and ter- 
rible creatures, more devils than men ; and with the touch- 
ing forms of little children. The action is sometimes 
merry, sometimes exciting, sometimes pathetic. We have 
laughter, and horror, and tears ; but the prevailing atmos- 
phere is one of cheerfulness, as befits a great Christmas 
pantomime. 

Dickens and Bulwer have in common their frequent use 
of gothic material, their tendency to seek literary effects 
of the sentimental kind, and their disposition to regard the 


368 


A HISTORY OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 


novel seriously as a social force destined to high purposes. 
A vigorous reaction against all this was led by William 
Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863). Thackeray was an 
Anglo-Indian, born in Calcutta. After a short 
Makepeace career at Cambridge, and some desultory art 
Thackeray. s ^ u( jy ? p e turned to literature. His first work 
consisted of light essays, sketches of travel, and burlesques, 
in which the weaknesses of the romantic school are cleverly 
hit off in imitations of Scott, Bulwer, and Disraeli. His 
first long story Catherine (1839), is the picture of a female 
rogue, drawn on the picaresque plan with unsympathetic 
realism, and intended as an antidote to the sentimental 
treatment of criminals as exemplified by Bulwer's Clifford, 
and Dickens's Nancy. Barry Lyndon (1844) is likewise a 
picaresque story, being a brilliant account of the exploits 
of an eighteenth century adventurer. 

Thackeray gave his realistic theories larger scope in 
Vanity Fair , written between 1846 and 1848. This, like 
most of his succeeding novels, he published in parts, sel- 
dom supplying the matter for the forthcoming chapter 
until the last possible moment. Naturally, the story is 
not a model of structure in the narrow technical sense ; 
but it may be said that this rather loose method of working 
suited not only Thackeray's temperament but also his artis- 
tic problem. For Thackeray's realism is that of the ob- 
server, not that of the analyst. He never isolates a single 
case and studies it with long, close patience. On the con- 
trary, he sees life with the large vision of a man of the world. 
To have confined his multitude of characters within the 
Thestructure limits of what is technically called a plot, 
of his Novels. wou pj } iave introduced an element of unreality 
into his book. The action of Vanity Fair revolves about 
the heroines, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The two 
women in their opposition are admirable foils ; Amelia 
mild and incapable — a parasite, the author calls her — 
living on the chivalrous protection of Dobbin ; Becky, 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


369 


keen and competent, making her world for herself, levy- 
ing tribute on every man who crosses her path. The two 
stories begin together, and Thackeray supplies a link be- 
tween them later in Jos Sedley ; but in the end he gives 
over the attempt to unite them, and lets the two sets of 
characters diverge in his novel as they must have done in 
life. 

One mark of Thackeray’s realism is his refusal to take 
his art seriously. In his view an author is but the master of 
a set of puppets with which he can represent real life, if he 
please, but over whose movements it is absurd to pretend 
that he has not absolute control. Hence Thackeray jests at 
his art in a tone that was most unpleasant to His view of 
minor craftsmen. This tone has done him a hlsArt * 
disservice with later readers, and belies the essential impor- 
tance of his work ; for though the world which he pict- 
ured is a bit antique in our eyes, its problems are ours, and 
granting the thirty years’ difference in time, Thackeray 
treats them in a way as significant for us as that of Mere- 
dith or Ibsen. 

The sceptical persiflage with which Thackeray treats his 
characters indicates his attitude toward the world which 
he pictures. In the metaphor of the puppets His Attitude 
lurks a gleam of the satire which Swift showed ^* d dthe 
in his sketch of society as Lilliput. The title 
too, Vanity Fair, — Bunyan’s fair, “ where is sold all sorts 
of vanity, and where is to be seen juggling, cheats, games, 
plays, fools, apes, knaves, rogues, and that of every kind,” 
— suggests something of contempt if not of bitterness. 
The roguishness and weakness of Thackeray’s puppets has 
long been a ground for calling their showman a cynic ; 
but Thackeray’s cynicism is strongly tempered with toler- 
ance and with pity. Dickens draws his pathos from the 
spectacle of ideal innocence exposed to the evils of the 
world; but Thackeray makes no less pitiful the sorrows 
of men and women who are themselves sinful, weak, and 


370 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


stupid. Becky’s husband Rawdon Crawley is not an ad- 
mirable figure, yet we are sorry for him. George and 
Amelia are both in their way contemptible, yet the scene 
of their parting is wringing with tenderness. And in the 
great book which followed Vanity Fair , The Newcomes, 
Thackeray has given a picture of human imperfection so 
inexpressibly touching, that every reader believes the story 
of the novelist’s coming from his work-room one day, 
sobbing, “I have killed Colonel Newcome.” Thackeray 
is merciful toward the feeble, flawed souls that he por- 
trays, because gentleness was a part of his nature. Dis- 
illusioned as to most of the pretentious virtues of the 
world, he still believed in kindness, in the instinctive 
goodness of one being toward another, and he exemplified 
this belief in his books as in his life. 

The importance of the historical element in fiction after 
Scott is shown by the fact that even the petty world of 
ms use of Vanity Fair is disturbed by a great national 
History. crisis ; but Thackeray, instead of using Water- 
loo to impose dignity and splendor upon his story, charac- 
teristically gives us a “ back-stairs ” view of war. We fol- 
low the battle, not in the thought of Napoleon or the Duke, 
but chiefly as it is reflected in the fears of the wretched 
Jos Sedley, in the hopes of his servant Isidore, and in the 
calculations of Becky Sharp ; chiefly, but not wholly : for 
there is poor, almost abandoned Amelia “ praying for 
George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet 
through his heart.” Thackeray is interested in famous 
events and persons because of the light which they throw 
upon the common affairs of men. Even in his historical 
novels he is a realist, seeking to recall the world of the 
eighteenth century, not in distant splendor, but in the 
actual forms in which it realized itself to a contemporary. 
In Henry Esmond (1852), however, as in Vanity Fair, 
Thackeray’s own temperament is to be reckoned with. His 
sympathy with the preceding century gives to his treat- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


371 


ment of it a warmth and brilliancy which makes the most 
realistic of historical novels also the most poetic. 

In Henry Esmond we follow the hero's childhood at 
Castlewood, in the mysterious atmosphere of plotting Pa- 
pists ; and his youth in the London of Queen Anne, where 
the persons and names of Addison, Steele, Prior, Swift, 
Fielding, Atterbury, meet us as casually as those of modern 
celebrities to-day. We see him take part in the wonderful 
victories of Marlborough, and in the daring game which 
the Pretender played for his crown. The vanished world 
lives for us in character and in episode ; lives with a dignity 
and richness of conception and style that shows <« Henry es- 
Thackeray to have been, when he chose, the mond -” 
greatest artist among the English novelists. In his master- 
piece he is writing, not as a careless, rather lazy master of a 
puppet-show, but in the person of the chivalrous Esmond. 
Every incident and description, then, must reflect his hero's 
character in some touch of nobility or of charm. In Es- 
mond's repulsion from Marlborough, in his devotion to 
Castlewood and his son, in his passion for Beatrix, and in 
his love for Lady Castlewood, there is the constant revela- 
tion of an honorable and loyal man. When he is telling 
us of the quarrel between Marlborough and Webb, there 
is that in their manner which reminds us that it is a 
gentleman's story. When he surrenders his birthright, 
property, and name, he bears himself with a simplicity 
and a modesty which are in keeping with a great renunci- 
ation. The style itself, marvellous in its technical ap- 
proximation to the manner of the period described, is yet 
more -wonderful in its reflection of Esmond's personality. 
When he leaves Castlewood or stands at his mother's grave, 
when he bends beside the body of his dear lord, run through 
by the villain Mohun, always his utterance is perfect in its 
intimacy, its simplicity, its distant, haunting rhythm. 
Even in a detail of the picture of Lady Castlewood vanish- 
ing from Esmond's sight in anger, Thackeray's distinction 


372 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

is evident. “ He saw her retreating, the taper lighting up 
her marble face, her scarlet lip quivering, and her shining 
golden hair.” Had he written only this scene, only this 
sentence, he might have been called a master. As it is he 
is the greatest writer who has used English in fiction. 

In his return to realism Thackeray found an industrious 
follower in Anthony Trollope (1815-1882). The latter 
adopted his master’s flippant view of the novel expressed in 
Vanity Fair, but unlike Thackeray he never succeeded as 
Anthony Troi- an artist in rising above it. A novel should 
lope. be written, he says frankly, to amuse young 

people of both sexes, and there should be nothing too un- 
pleasant in it ; at least, he promises the reader on one oc- 
casion, he will never let such a thing happen in a novel of 
his. Trollope’s fame began with a series of novels dealing 
with the life among the clergy of a cathedral city. The 
Warden (1855), the first of these, was followed by Barclies- 
ter Toivers (1857), — generally considered his masterpiece, 
— by Framley Parsonage (1861), and by The Last Chron- 
icle of Barset (1867). He also developed a series of politi- 
cal novels, and treated various aspects of English com- 
mercial and country life. In his wide survey of social 
conditions in the middle and upper classes of England, he 
comes nearer than any other English novelist to fulfilling 
the vast programmes of the French realists, Balzac and 
Zola. Trollope was a man of great industry, in every 
sense a professional novelist, writing a daily allowance, 
and often keeping two or three novels going at once. 
Much of his work is perfunctory, but at his best he has a 
power of creating figures which have an astonishing air of 
life. Of these Mrs. Proudie, the bishop’s wife, who rages 
Charles Reade through several books, is the most notable. 

As Trollope may be called a satellite of 
Thackeray, so Charles Reade (1814-1884) in a sense shines 
with the reflected light of Dickens. Like Dickens, Reade 
had the temperament of a romanticist ; but beginning 


THE .NINETEENTH CENTUHY 


373 


his career at a time when realism was the literary shib- 
boleth, he made it his effort not only to discover the 
romantic elements in real life and to treat them in the 
romantic manner, but also to satisfy himself and his 
readers of their truth by elaborate documentary evidence. 
Reade had an immense fondness for the stage, chiefly, per- 
haps, because in the actor’s life he found the romance which 
he was always seeking. He wrote numerous plays ; and 
one of his best known stories. Peg Woffington (1852), is a 
story of stage life. His serious discipleship of Dickens 
appears in his novels with purpose. Put Yourself in Ms 
Place (1870) is a story designed to reflect the wrongs which 
trades unions inflicted upon the individual workman. In 
A Terrible Temptation is a novelist, a student of modern 
social conditions, to whom the oppressed have recourse, 
and who uses his power to enlist public sympathy in their 
behalf and to overawe the oppressor. Reade’s masterpiece 
is The Cloister and the Hearth , a novel of the period of 
the German Renaissance, with the father of the great 
Erasmus as its hero. To the construction of this work 
Reade brought his laborious method of getting up his facts, 
but in spite of its learning the book is one of the three or 
four best historical novels since Scott. 

Thackeray as a realist and moralist had an earnest sym- 
pathizer in a writer who was by circumstances a romanti- 
cist. Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) grew up in charlotte 
the Yorkshire parsonage of her father, with Bronte, 
such experience as came from country boarding-schools, 
a year in Brussels, and her own family life with its 
terrible succession of tragedies, — the death of her mother, 
the blindness of her father, the death of her sisters, 
and the ruin of her brother through dissipation. She 
and her sisters wrote for their own amusement, invent- 
ing scenes and characters to supplement the melancholy 
resources of the life that they knew. This perfectly natural 
romanticism led Emily Bronte to write one of the most 


S 74 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


strangely powerful of all novels, Wuthering Heights (1847), 
in which the hero and heroine love and torture each other 
in a world of their own, remote from the real world, both 
social and psychological. 

In Charlotte Bronte the imagination never attained to 
such tragic splendor as in her sister ; her novels are, how- 
ever, more nearly in contact with actual life. The first of 
them, Jane Eyre (1847), opens with a transcript from Miss 

Bronte’s own life at boarding-school, but the 

“Jane Eyre.” & 

heroine soon passes beyond the world of the au- 
thor’s experience into the romantic realm of her longing and 
imagination. Undoubtedly, there is much that is second- 
rate in the story. The hero of Jane’s adoration, Rochester, 
is an impossible character. His mad wife is a literary in- 
heritance from Mrs. Radcliffe. The incidents reveal al- 
most pathetically Miss Bronte’s ignorance of life and her 
lack of power to measure probability. But the heroine is 
a genuine woman. Psychologically she is a study of the 
author’s inner life, and her romantic experience is sym- 
bolical of the attempt which Charlotte and her sisters 
made to enlarge and color their oppressive little world with 
the spaces and splendors of the imagination. 

It was the honesty of Miss Bronte’s romanticism that 
made Jane Eyre successful both with the critics and with the 
public. Under the advice of the critics, Miss Bronte aban- 
doned gothic machinery in her later books, Shirley (1849) 
and Villette (1853), and fell back on her own life in York- 
shire and in Brussels. Nevertheless these books bear con- 
stant witness to the lack of harmony between her artistic 
purpose and the means which her experience afforded her 
of carrying out this purpose with success. For while her 
Her Later experience in life was limited, and constantly 
w° rk s. tended to throw her back on romantic inven- 
tion, she was in purpose a realist, bent on dealing with 
things as they are, and on making them better. She dedi- 
cated Jane Eyre to Thackeray, in terms which show the 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


375 


amount of moral energy which she possessed. Unluckily 
her life did not bring her into contact with large projects 
of reform. As a moralist and as an artist it was her fort- 
une to deal, in spite of all her efforts to the contrary, with 
the petty or the unreal. 

In one direction Miss Bronte’s experience was adequate, 
namely, in her contact with nature. From her books 
one comes to know how largely in her life the clouds, the 
ragged hills, the wide spaces of the Yorkshire Her Feeling 
moors under sunset or moonlight, made up for f0 Nature * 
the inadequacy of human society and interests. It is 
true, she has the gothic trick of setting off her incidents by 
a sympathetic background ; but in a deeper fashion than 
this she makes nature enter into the warp and woof of her 
stories through the part which it plays in the most essen- 
tial element in them, the inner life of her heroines. 

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) shared Miss Bronte’s 
serious view of fiction ; and his position in the world 
was such as to connect him with large issues. Charles 

He was a clergyman. Professor of Modern Kingsley. 

History at Cambridge, a leader in the “ Broad Church ” 
movement, the friend of Maurice, Tennyson, and Stan- 
ley, and somewhat later of Carlyle, of whose strenuous 
philosophy of life he was a sort of popular exponent. 
His novels fall into two divisions. In the earlier ones. 
Yeast (1848) and Alton Locke (1850), Kingsley gives a 
view of the problems which perplexed men’s minds in the 
middle years of the century, the years of the Catholic re- 
vival and of Chartism ; and he tries to point out a middle 
course between Catholicism and scepticism in religion, be- 
tween Toryism and revolution in politics. In the second 
division he carries his purpose into the historical novel. 
Hypatia (1853) is a study of the struggle between Christi- 
anity and Paganism, in Alexandria, during the fifth cen- 
tury. His masterpiece. Westward Ho (1855), is a vigorous 
story of the times of Elizabeth, depicting the English con- 


376 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


test with Spain by sea and in America. In both these 
novels, Kingsley sought to develop his ideal of manhood, 
a compound of physical energy and intellectual moderation 
to which he felt in some way that the Catholic Church was 
dangerous. In both he displays many of the qualities of 
the artist. His scene has the vividness and splendor of 
painting, and his incident, though at times childishly un- 
convincing, is often superbly dramatic. 

The religious and social problems of England found a 
less passionate exponent in Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810- 
1865), the wife of a Unitarian clergyman in 
Mrs. Gaskeii. Manchester. Her nfe brought her into contact 
with the industrial and social difficulties growing out of 
the struggle between master and workman ; and these she 
treated with great skill in Mary Barton (1848), and in 
North and South (1855). In Cranford (1853), her best 
known book, she entered a different field, that of realistic 
observation developed in a somewhat fantastic setting. 

Kingsley and Mrs. Gaskell connect fiction with the in- 
tellectual and moral development of England, a connection 
which is emphasized further by the work of Mary Ann 
Evans, or George Eliot (1819-1880). She was born in 
1819 and grew up in the years when, under the influence 
of scientific speculation, the English mind was casting 
George Eiiot ^ oose f rom its theological moorings. She was 
for a time assistant editor of the Westminster 
Review, the organ of the free thinkers ; and in this posi- 
tion she met John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, G. H. 
Lewes, and other liberals. After her union with Mr. Lewes 
she began to experiment with fiction, her first story, “ The 
Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton,” appearing in 
Blackwood’s Magazine in 1856. She added to this story 
two others of moderate length, and republished all three 
in 1858 as Scenes of Clerical Life . The next year she 
published her first novel, Adam Bede, and it was evident 
that a new writer and a great one had appeared. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


377 


George Eliot's starting-point in Adam Bede was an inci- 
dent in the life of her aunt, who once accompanied to the 
scaffold a poor girl condemned for child-murder. This 
aunt was the original of Dinah Morris, the woman preacher 
who rides in the hangman's cart with Hetty Sorrel. 
Hetty s aunt, Mrs. Poyser, is said to show some traits of 
George Eliot's mother ; and Caleb Garth, in a later book, 
Middlemarchy was drawn from her father. Indeed, in her 
realism she was in large measure dependent on the material 
of her own early life in Warwickshire and Derbyshire. 
Her earlier books abound in local studies of charming 
humor. The elder Tullivers, the Gleggs and the Pullets, 
and Bob Jakin, in The Mill on the Floss , are as definite as 
Scott's or Miss Austen's minor characters. The chief sign 
of decline in George Eliot's last novel, Da7iiel Deronda , is 
the attempt to replace these vigorous living 
beings with badly imagined puppets like the AsaReallst * 
Meyricks. She had used up the material of her youth, and 
found nothing in her brilliant life of culture and travel 
to take its place. 

Adam Bede is the most natural of George Eliot's books, 
simple in problem, direct in action, with the freshness and 
strength of the Derbyshire landscape and character and 
speech in its pages. Its successor. The Mill on the Floss 
(1860), shows signs of a growing perplexity on the part of 
the author, of a hesitation between her art and her message. 
For George Eliot was more than an observer ; she was also 
a scientist and a moralist. She was not content to picture 
human life as it appears. She tried to pierce behind the 
shows of things, and to reveal the forces by which they are 
controlled. Accordingly she analyzes her characters. In the 
case of the simple types this analysis takes the form of com- 
ment, rapid, incisive, and quite convincing. She tells us, 
for example, that Mrs. Tulliver was like the gold-fish who 
continues to butt his head against the encircling globe ; and 
at once the type of cheerful incapacity to learn by experience 


378 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

is fixed before us forever. In the case of the more con- 
scious, developed characters, her analysis is more elaborate 
and more sustained. For her heroines George Eliot drew 
largely upon her own spiritual experience, and this per- 
AsaPsychoio- sonal psychology she supplemented by wide 
« ist - reading, especially of the literature of confes- 

sions. In this way she gained an extraordinary vividness 
in portraying the inner life. Her most characteristic pas- 
sages are those in which she follows the ebb and flow of 
decision in a character’s mind, dwelling on the triumph or 
defeat of a personality in a drama where there is but one 
actor. Such a drama is that which Maggie Tulliver plays 
out in her heart, torn between the impulse to take her joy 
as it offers, and the unconquerable conviction that she 
cannot seek her own happiness by sacrificing others. 

Further it is to be noted that George Eliot never lets her 
case drop with the individual analysis. She always strives 
„ to make her case typical, to show that the per- 

As a Moralist. r 

sonal result is m accordance with a general law. 
Dorothea’s defeat and Lydgate’s failure in Middlemarch , 
Tito’s degeneration in Romola , Gwendolen’s humiliation 
and recovery in Daniel Deronda , are all represented as 
occurring in obedience to laws of the ethical world, as im- 
mutable as those of the physical. This is George Eliot’s 
chief function as a writer, the interpretation of the world 
in terms of morality. She does not deal with party ques- 
tions, nor primarily with industrial or social problems. 
Her ethical motive is a broader one than the emancipa- 
tion of thought, or the formulation of a political pro- 
gramme. It is to show how, in obedience to law, character 
grows or decays ; how a single fault or flaw brings suffering 
and death, and throws a world into ruin ; how, on the other 
hand, there is a making perfect through suffering, a regen- 
eration through sin itself, a hope for the world through the 
renunciation and self-sacrifice of the individual. “ It is a 
blind self-seeking,” she tells us through Dinah Morris, 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


379 


“ which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth,” for, as she says 
again, “ those who live and suffer may sometimes have the 
blessedness of being a salvation/’ It is this possibility of 
blessedness which in George Eliot's view is the compensa- 
tion for evil ; that we may 

“ Be to other souls 

The cup of strength in some great agony ” 

in part makes up for the presence of that agony in the 
world. Whatever be the scientific value of a system of 
ethics which makes the service of humanity the highest 
reason for doing right, or whatever the disparity between 
the novelist’s art and the presentation of such a system, 
George Eliot’s work represents the highest and sincerest 
development of fiction with a purpose. 

It is significant of the slow growth of George Meredith’s 
literary reputation that, though we think of him as the 
successor of George Eliot, his first novel appeared before 
hers. He published The Shaving of Sliagpat in George Mere _ 
1856. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel appeared dith - 
in 1859, and other works at intervals of two or three years 
down to 1895 ; of these, Beauchamp's Career (1876), The 
Egoist (1879), Diana of the Crossways (1885), and One of 
Our Conquerors (1890), are the most noteworthy. 

Meredith, like George Eliot, is a psychologist, and in 
some sort a moralist. But while George Eliot tries to make 
her characters individual, and then to make their lives typi- 
cal by showing how the laws of the moral world get them- 
selves enforced, as it were, automatically, Meredith tends 
to make his characters types, embodiments of the particular 
quality which he is interested in exploiting. Again, George 
Eliot works through tragedy, Meredith often through com- 
edy ; the one scourges evil-doers, the other makes them 
ridiculous. George Eliot seeks to present a fully devel- 
oped background, and is at pains to make her characters 


380 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


talk with absolute realism ; Meredith concentrates atten- 
tion upon his typical characters, and cares little whether 
his men and women talk naturally so long as they embody 
the essential, spiritual truth of humanity. His dialogue 
is more highly compressed, more heavily loaded with 
meaning, than it could be in actual life. The same 
pursuit of the essential makes him abrupt in structure ; 
he shifts the scene suddenly, he drops the thread of his 
story and picks it up again where he wills, in such a man- 
ner as to render it difficult for any but a practised reader 
to follow him. Like Browning, instead of presenting his 
tale in plain, clear narrative, he prefers to give it to us in 
flashes and half-lights, as it is seen from different points of 
view. He skirmishes round his story, seeming to miss a 
hundred strong situations for which the reader actually 
hungers. But this is the strategy of novel-writing. After 
pages of skirmishing he at last brings his characters to 
battle in just that relation in which every force is avail- 
able. Thus in vital moments Meredith's novels fulfil the 
reader's demand for significant action. By the freighted 
meaning of his action and dialogue Meredith does for his 
readers, more than any other novelist, what the artist 
should do, he gives a heightened sense of realities. He 
does not reproduce life ; he does not decorate it ; he does 
not idealize it ; but he exemplifies it in types and situations 
of unusual meaning and power. 

Meredith's artistic formula is in sharp contrast to the 
practice of the other great living English novelist. Thomas 
Hardy's career has, like Meredith's, been a long one. He 
published Desperate Remedies in 1868, and A Pair of Blue 
Eyes in 1873. The Return of the Native, The Woodland- 
ers, and Far from the Madding Crowd, his three master- 
Thomas pieces, followed. His popular reputation began, 
Hardy * however, with Tess of the D’ Urhervilles (1891). 
In Meredith's view of life, man is all important. The works 
of man, his society, his conventions, his expression of him- 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


381 


self, are the great facts of the world. Man is indeed held 
down and sacrificed, by his own perverseness and by that of 
his fellows ; but he can rise against this human perverse- 
ness, attack it, and overthrow it, or die valiantly Contrast with 
in the attempt. The struggle of humanity is one Meredith, 
of man with men, and is always capable of yielding glorious 
victory. This hope gives brightness to all of Meredith's 
books, even to the most tragic. In Hardy^s world, on the 
other hand, man is of the smallest importance ; the study of 
man's intellect and of his works will never bring us nearer to 
the secret of the universe, to the essential reason or unreason 
of things. A man is not held, thwarted, and insulted by his 
fellows only ; his warfare is not chiefly with them ; the per- 
versity of his lot is not chiefly of their making. It is rather 
of the very nature of the world into which he is born, a world 
full of the irony of circumstance. It is true, human beings 
are often the vehicles of that irony, but we cannot say that 
Hardy's heroes are conquered by human opponents. They 
fall before they can come to close quarters with the enemy. 
Jude the Obscure, checked in his ambition for scholarship, 
cannot get at the man behind the system which damns 
him. He can only write bitter words on the outside wall of 
the college which refuses him admittance. Thus Hardy's 
world is without the element of healthful, hopeful com- 
bat. Life is tragic by hypothesis ; the irony of circunu 
stance is a recognizable element in the metaphysical 
constitution of the world. Often the operations of this 
time-spirit are humorous, with a grim contemptuous hu- 
mor that is as bitter as its malice : but in Hardy's later 
works the tragedy is not lightened even by this devilish 
play. At the end of Tess of the D’ Urbervilles, he does 
indeed call the work of “ Time the arch-satirist " with Tess 
a joke, but we cannot help feeling that the arch-satirist has 
been all along in bitter earnest. 

In contrast with the insignificance of man. Hardy pre- 
sents the eternal reality of nature. With him the scene is 


382 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


an element of first importance, essential in the develop- 
ment of the story. Sometimes he treats it, especially in 
his early work, in a poetic and idyllic fashion, as an escape 
from the tragedy of life — the pastoral escape. But more 
often he uses it with symbolical meaning, as when he makes 
the warped, misshapen, stunted trees in TJie Woodlanders 
suggest “the unfulfilled intention” in human life; or he 
represents it as the embodiment of the power not ourselves 
which works man’s humiliation. It is noteworthy that in 
his human types he chooses those which are closest to 
nature, those in which the primitive impulses are strongest, 
in which action is the natural mode of expression. Mer- 
edith draws his characters from the walks of life where 
men and women are most complex, where thought is most 
active. In Hardy’s view, thought is as futile toward truth 
as was the Tower of Babel to scale the heavens. Meredith, 
in his belief in the significant, is continually heightening 
the individual, pushing his characters beyond human 
limits. Hardy holds that nothing in man is significant 
except race, sex, and the great servitude to time and 
nature ; and hence he chooses types which will present 
these realities most clearly. 

It must not be thought that Hardy’s novels were written 
to present a system of fatalistic philosophy, nor need their 
atmosphere be taken, necessarily, as an expression of per- 
sonal temperament. It is true, however, that their increas- 
ingly gloomy tone appealed to a mood of the later nineteenth 
century, a mood of weariness and reaction from moral 
strenuousness, of disinterest in questions of conscience. 
Such a mood always finds indirect expression in some 
form of romantic escape from the realities of life, and of 
Robert this neo-romanticism Robert Louis Stevenson 

Louis (1850-1894) is the brightest exponent. Ste- 

Stevenson. v / , , . « ®, . ... m 

venson gamed his first lame with Treasure 

Island (1883), a fascinating tale of piracy and search for 
gold, without the remotest suggestion of a moral meaning. 


THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


383 


There followed Kidnapped (1886), The Master' of Ballan- 
trae (1889), and David Balfour (1893), all stories of advent- 
ure in the past. He wrote also many short stories, some 
with an historical setting, some (as The New Arabian Nights) 
with a charmingly fantastic arrangement of modern con- 
ditions for a background. His last years he spent in 
Samoa, and the South Seas gave him material for a new 
series of short stories, and for The Ebb Tide (1893). 

Stevenson has presented in several essays his artistic 
theory, according to which incident is to be regarded as 
the highest mood of fiction. But his practice in his later 
works shows that he did not satisfy himself with merely 
inventing surprising adventures and imagining remote 
conditions. With, him human nature and human issues 
are at the centre of the developing web of Stevens0n , s 
event ; and from the most romantic background Art - 
human character disengages itself in strong clear forms. 
Alan Breck on the Scottish moors, in Kidnapped , and 
Wiltshire, in The Beach of Falesa , are both incontrovert- 
ibly actual. 

Stevenson’s romanticism shows itself most interestingly 
in a spirit of artistic enterprise and adventure. His 
novels and tales are more various and daring in their 
method and technique than those of any of his predecessors ; 
and on the whole his artistic experiments justify themselves. 
In firmness and clearness of structure, in novelty and vari- 
ety of method, methods of description and narrative, and 
in surface brilliancy of style, he marks the extraordinary 
technical advance which the novel has made since the days 
of Scott. 

For another reason, also, Stevenson’s name may fittingly 
stand at the end of a chapter on the English novel. He 
represents in a sense the return of the century upon itself. 
The nineteenth century opened with an extraordinary de- 
velopment of romanticism, under Scott. That romanticism 
became mingled with realistic elements in Bulwer and 


384 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Dickens, and finally gave way entirely before the realism of 
Thackeray and George Eliot. This change corresponded 
to a development which went on all over Europe, — a 
change evident in French literature in the work of Flau- 
bert, Zola, and Maupassant ; in Russian literature in that 
of Tolstoi and Turgenief. It is to be considered, however, 
that the English realists have never been so 
summary. thorough-going as their contemporaries on the 
Continent. The absolute realistic formula, the picturing 
of life for its own sake, was relieved in Thackeray by the 
play of temperament, in George Eliot by moral purpose, 
in George Meredith by an artistic ideal, and in Hardy 
by a fascinating though sinister philosophy. At length in 
Stevenson the romantic spirit is come again ; and though 
this romanticism is no longer unconscious as in Scott, or 
a literary trick as in Bulwer, or merely temperamental as 
in Miss Bronte, but is infused with artistic and ethical 
seriousness, still the fact remains that, in his largest as- 
pect, Stevenson represents the impulse of escape from the 
here and now into the world of play. 


* 








READING GUIDE 

The following is intended as a working bibliography, to 
serve as guide to a first-hand acquaintance with the auth- 
ors treated in . this book, and to some of the biographical 
and critical literature concerning them. Cheap and acces- 
sible editions and short biographies are given preference. 
Authors are mentioned in the order in which they occur 
in the body of the book, and the chapter-divisions are fol- 
lowed, except that the two chapters on the novel are thrown 
together. 

Of the critical matter here indicated, the young student 
is of course not expected to make much use ; but it will 
enable him to extend his knowledge of any given author or 
period when desired, and will serve, it is hoped, as a guide 
to after-study. 


GENERAL WORKS COVERING THE WHOLE PERIOD 

* Green’s Short History of the English People may be used with profit 
throughout, to connect literary with social and political history. 
Traill’s Social England is valuable for reference, with the same end in 
view. The Dictionary of National Biography may be consulted for 
biographical treatment fuller than that given in the text and less 
extended than that furnished by the separate biographies mentioned 
below. Taine’s History of English Literature, though hardly trust- 
worthy, is stimulating, and valuable if used with caution. Ward’s 
English Poets and Craik’s English Prose give extracts covering prac- 
tically the whole course of English literature, and are especially valu- 
able in the case of minor authors. Ryland’s Chronological Outlines 
of English Literature is extremely useful for reference. 

Chapter I. : The Anglo-Saxon Period 

General Works.— Stopford Brooke’s History of Early English Litera- 
ture (Macmillan). J. J. Jusserand’s Literary History of the 
385 


386 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


English People (Putnam). B. Ten Brink’s History of English 
Literature (Holt). 

Translations. -^Beowulf : The Deeds of Beowulf, prose translations, 
by J. Earle (Clarendon Press) ; by J. L. Hall, Beowulf, in modern 
English prose (Macmillan) ; The Tale of Beowulf, by W. Morris and 
A. J. Wyatt (Longmans) ; metrical translation by J. M. Garnett 
(Ginn) ; rhythmical and alliterative translation by J. L. Hall 
(Heath). Widsith is partially translated in Brooke’s Early English 
Literature, and completely in The Exeter Book, Ed. I. Gollancz 
(Kegan Paul). Deor’s Lament and The Wanderer are translated in 
Brooke; the latter also in Gollancz’s Exeter Book. The Wife’s 
Complaint and The Lover’s Message are analyzed and partially 
translated in Brooke. Caedmon's Metrical Paraphrase, with trans- 
lation and text, is edited by Thorp. Cynewulf’s Christ is edited, 
with translation, by I. Gollancz (Nutt). The Christ of Cynewulf, 
translated into English prose, by C. H. Whitman (Ginn). Trans- 
lations of the Phoenix and the Andreas are given in Gollancz’s 
Exeter Book. Judith, with text and translation, is edited by A. 
S. Cook (Heath). Longfellow’s Poets and Poetry of Europe con- 
tains illustrations of early poetry. A translation of The Battle of 
Brunanburh, by Lord Tennyson, can be found in his Avorks ; a 
translation of the same is given in J. M. Garnett’s Elene, Judith, 
and other Anglo-Saxon poems (Ginn). 

Chapter II. : The Norman-French Period 

General Works . — The Story of the Normans, by S. O. Jewett (Stories 
of the Nations); Jusserand’s Literary History of the English Peo- 
ple ; Ten Brink’s History of English Literature (Holt) ; Courthope’s 
History of English Poetry. For the making of the language, see 
Jusserand’s Literary History, Book III., Chapter I. ; Bradley’s 
Making of English (Macmillan) ; Marsh’s Lectures on the English 
Language ; Emerson’s History of the English Language. 

Texts and Translations . — For the romance literature of the period 
see Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Metrical Ilomances, 
Morley’s Early English Prose Ilomances (Carisbrooke Library), 
Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances, Lady Charlotte Guest’s Mabinogion, 
and Sidney Lanier’s Boy’s Mabinogion (Scribner). Sir GaAvayne and 
the Green Knight, edited by R. Morris, for the Early English Text 
Society (Triibner), Layamon’s Brut, text and translation, edited 
by Sir F. Madden. Extracts from the Cursor Mundi, and from 
Richard Rolle of Hampole, may be found in Specimens of Early 
English, Vol. II., edited by R. Morris and W. W. Skeat (Clarendon 
Press). The Pearl, text and translation, edited by I. Gollancz 
(Nutt). The lyrics “ Alysoun” and 41 Lent is come with love to 


READING GUIDE 


387 


town ” are given in Morris and Skeat’s Specimens of Early English, 
Vol. II. Ihe Love llune of Thomas de Hales can be found in 
Ten Brink’s History of English Literature, Yol. I. A very in- 
teresting and valuable collection of early lyric poetry is Bodde- 
ker’s Altenglisch Dichtungen, but this is suitable only for advanced 
students. 

Criticism . — Besides the general works mentioned above, see Studies in 
the Arthurian Legends, J. Rhys (Clarendon Press). An essay on 
Old English Metrical Romances occurs in J. W. Hales’s Folia 
Litteraria. 


Chapter III. : The Age of Chaucer 

General Works. — Jusserand’s Literary History of the English People, 
and the same author’s English Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth 
Century; Ten Brink’s History of English Literature; Courthope’s 
History of English Poetry (especially valuable for Langland) ; 
Browne’s Chaucer’s England ; Chronicles of Froissart, Lord Ber- 
ner’s translation (16th century) newly edited (Macmillan, 1895). 
For younger students, the Boy’s Froissart, by S. Lanier (Scribner) ; 
Stories from Froissart, by H. Newbolt. 

Chaucer. Texts. — The best complete single-volume edition is the 
Student’s Chaucer, edited by W. W. Skeat (Clarendon Press). 
Skeat has alfco edited Chaucer’s Complete Works, in 7 vols. ; 
the Minor Poems, in 1 vol.; and various selections from the Can- 
terbury Tales (all from the Clarendon Press) G. L. Kittredge 
edits Selections from the Canterbury Tales (Ginn). 

Biography , Criticism , etc . — A Chaucer Primer, by A. W. Pol- 
lard (Macmillan) ; The Language and Metre of Chaucer, by B. Ten 
Brink, translated by M. B. Smith (Macmillan) ; Chaucer’s Pro- 
nunciation, by G. Hempl (Heath) ; Life of Chaucer, by A. W. Ward 
(English Men of Letters) ; Studies in Chaucer, by T. R. Lounsbury 
(3 vols.) R. Lowell, Chaucer, in My Study Windows; W. Haz- 
litt, Chaucer and Spenser, in Lectures on the English Poets. 

Gower, Langland, etc. Texts. — Gower, English Works, edited by G. 
C. Macaulay (Kegan Paul). Wyclif, Select English Works, 
edited by T. Arnold (Clarendon Press). Gangland, The Vision of 
William Concerning Piers the Plowman, edited by W. W. Skeat 
(gives 3 texts). Skeat has also edited a small edition of Piers 
Plowman, giving the first seven cantos (Clarendon Press). Piers 
the Plowman, done into modern prose, by K. M. Warren (London, 
1899). The King’s Quair, edited by W. W. Skeat (Blackwood). 
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, in modern spelling (Macmil- 
lan’s Library of English Classics). X'Le Morte Darthur, edited by 
I. Gollancz (Temple Classics). Malory’s History of King Arthur 


388 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


and the Quest of the Holy Grail, selected portions, edited by E. 
Rhys (Camelot Series). The Boy’s King Arthur, with introductory 
essay, by S. Lanier (Scribner). Morris and Skeat’s Specimens of 
Early English, Yol. II., contains extracts from Laugland, Gower’s 
Confessio Amantis, Wyclif’s Bible, and Mandeyille’s Travels. 

Biography and Criticism.— J. J. Jusserand, Piers Plowman, 
a contribution to the history of English mysticism. Confessio 
Amantis, in J. W. Hales’s Folia Litteraria. C. W. Le Bas, Life 
of John Wyclif (Harper). L. Sergeant, Wyclif (Heroes of the 
Nations Series). J. J. Jusserand, The Romance of a King’s Life 
(i.e., King James I. of Scotland) contains an appreciative study of 
the King s Quair and extracts from it. 

Chapter IV. : The Renaissance 

General Works. — F. Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution 
(Scribner); L. F. Field, An Introduction to the Study of the 
Renaissance (Scribner) ; The Italian Renaissance in England, by 
L. Einstein (Macmillan) ; A. Pearson, A Short History of the 
Renaissance in Italy, taken from the work of J. A. Symonds 
(Smith Elder) ; B. 0. Flower, The Century of Sir Thomas 
More (Arena Publishing Co.)^ Wm. Hazlitt, Lectures on the 
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (Bell and Daldy, 1871); G. E. 
Saintsbury, Elizabethan Literature (Macmillan) ; E. P. Whipple, 
The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (Houghton Mifflin); 
W. Pater, The Renaissance : Studies in Art and Poetry (Macmil- 
lan) ; J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 
translated by S. G. C. Middlemore (London, 1898). 

Sir Thomas MoRE.-^Utopia, with other ideal commonwealths (Morley’s 
Universal Library). Utopia and History of Edward V., with 
Roper’s Life of More, in Camelot Series and Temple Classics. 
Utopia, in Pitt Press Series. For lives of Colet, Erasmus, and 
More, see The Oxford Reformers, by F. Seebohm (Longmans). 

Roger Ascham. — Toxophilus and The Schoolmaster, in Arber’s Eng- 
lish Reprints (Macmillan). 

Hugh Latimer. — “ Sermon on the Ploughers,” in Arber’s English 
Reprints; Selections in Cassell’s National Library. 

Wyatt and Surrey. — Poems, in Tottel’s Miscellany, Arber’s English 
Reprints fPoems, Aldine edition; The Surrey and Wyatt Anthol- 
ogy, ed. E. Arber (Frowde). Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Poems, 
by W. E. Simonds (Heath). Essay on Wyatt and Surrey, in J. 
W. Hales’s Folia Litteraria. 

Thomas Sackville. — Induction, and Complaint of Buckingham, in Mir- 
ror for Magistrates, Library of Old Authors (Scribner) ; Gorboduc, 


HEADING GUIDE 


389 


in Specimens of Preshakespearean Drama, edited by J. M. 
Manly (Ginn). 

John Lyly.— Euphues, in Arber’s English Reprints. Plays, in Library 
of Old Authors; Endymion, edited, with essay, by G. P. Baker 
(Holt); Campaspe, in Manly’s Specimens of Preshakespearean 
Drama (Ginn). 

Sir Philip Sidney. Texts.— Arcadia (reproduction of old edition), 
edited by H. O. Sommers (Kegan Paul) ; ’^Defense of Poesy, ed. 
A. S. Cooj^ (Ginn), also in Pitt Press Series and Arber’s English 
Reprints ; Astrophel and Stella, ed. A. Pollard (Stott) ; Selections, 
prose, ed. G. MacDonald, in the Elizabethan Library (McClurg) ; 
Selections, poetry, ed. A. B. Grosart, in the Elizabethan Library 
(Stock). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by Eulke Greville, Lord 
Brooke, in Vol. IV. of A. B. Grosart’s edition of the Works of Lord 
Brooke (Fuller’s Worthies Library); Life, by J. A. Symonds 
(English Men of Letters) ; Life, by H. R. Fox Bourne (Heroes of 
the Nations) ; some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney, in Charles 
Lamb’s Essays of Elia. 

Stephen Gosson. — The School of Abuse, in Arber’s English Reprints. 

Robert Greene. — Works, ed. A. B. Grosart (Iluth Library) ; Dramatic 
Works and Poems, ed. A. Dyce (Pickering); Friar Bacon and 
Friar Bungay, ed. A. Ward (Oxford, 1892); Menaphon, ed. E. 
Arber (London, 1880); Groatsworth of Wit, in Elizabethan and 
Jacobean Pamphlets, ed. G. E. Saintsbury; Poems of Greene, 
Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, 1 vol., ed. G. Bell (Bell). 

Thomas Nash. — Works, ed. A. B. Grosart (Huth Library) ; The Un- 
fortunate Traveller, edited, with essay on life and writings of 
Nash, by E. Gosse (Chiswick Press) ; Other Papers by Nash in 
Saintsbury’s Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets. 

Thomas Lodge. — Works, ed. E. Gosse, for the Hunterian Club 
(Glasgow, 1883); Sonnets, in Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles (Mc- 
Clurg). 

George Peele. — Works, ed. A. H. Bullen (Nimmo) ; Poems and Plays, 
in Morley’s Universal Library. 

Richard Hooker. Texts.— Works, ed. J. Keble (Oxford University 
Press, 1836) ; The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books 1-4, in 
Morley’s Universal Library. 

Biography and Criticism.— Life, by Isaac Walton (with lives of 
Donne, Wotton, and Herbert) in Morley’s Universal Library; 
Essay, by E. Dowden, in Puritan and Anglican. 

Edmund Spenser. Texts.— Works, Globe edition, with memoir by 
J. W. Hales (Macmillan) ;*Works, Aldine edition; Minor Poems, 
in Temple classics (Macmillan) ; Selected Poems, with introduc- 


390 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


tion by R. Noel, in Canterbury Poets Series ; Spenser Anthology, 
ed. E. Arber (Frowde). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life , by R. W. Church (English Men 
of Letters) ; An Outline Guide to the Study of Spenser, by E. I. 
Carpenter (University of Chicago, 1894); Essay, by J. R. Lowell, 
in Among my Books, and by E. Dowden, in Transcripts and Stud- 
ies ; Chaucer and Spenser, in W. Hazlitt’s Lectures on the Eng- 
lish Poets. See also W. S. Landor’s Imaginary Conversations 
Essex and Spenser and Elizabeth and Cecil. 

Gabriel Harvey. — W orks, ed. A. B. Grosart (Huth Library). 

George Chapman. Texts . — Poems, Plays, and Translations, ed. R. H. 
Shepherd, with study of Chapman by A. 0. Swinburne (London, 
1874) ; Plays, in Mermaid Series ^Translation of Iliad, in Morley’s 
Universal Library. 

Biography and Criticism. — Chapman, a Critical Study, by A. C. 
Swinburne (Chatto and Windus) ; Essay, by J. R. Lowell, in The 
Old English Dramatists, and in Conversations on Some of the 
Old Poets. ^ 

Michael Drayton. — Idea’s Mirror, in Arber’s English Garner; Son- 
nets, in Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles. 

Samuel Daniel.— Sonnets, in Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles; Defense of 
Rhyme, in Ancient Critical Essays, ed. Haslewood. 

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. — Works, ed. A. B. Grosart; Selec- 
tions, ed. A. B. Grosart, in the Elizabethan Library (McClurg) ; Life 
of Sidney, in V ol. IV. of Grosart’s edition of Lord Brooke’s Works ; 
Sonnets, in Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles. 

Christopher Marlowe.— Poems of Greene, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, 
ed. R. Bell (Bell). For Marlowe’s plays, and critical works upon 
him, see next division. 

Thomas Campion.— Book of Airs, in Arber’s English Garner: Poems 
(Dent). 

Other collections of Elizabethan Lyrics are : Lyrics from the 
Dramatists of the Elizabethan Age, ed. A. H. Bullen (Lawrence 
and Bullen) ; Poems, chiefly lyrical, from Elizabethan Romances, 
etc., ed. A. H. Bullen (Nimmo); English Madrigals in the Time 
of Shakespeare, ed. F. A. Cox (Dent); A Book of Elizabethan 
Lyrics, ed. F. E. Schelling (Athenaeum Press Series) ; Elizabethan 
Songs, ed. E. II. Garrett, with introduction by A. Lang (Osgood, 
Mcllvaine). 

Sir Walter Raleigh. Texts.— Works (Oxford University Press); 

* Selections, ed. A. B. Grosart, in the Elizabethan Library (Stock); 
Poems, in Courtly Poets, ed. Hannah, Aldine edition ; The Fight 
of the Revenge, in Arber’s English Reprints. 

Biography and Criticism.— Life, by E. Gosse (English Wor 


READING GUIDE 


391 


thies) ; Life, by E. Edwards (Macmillan) ; Essay, by Charles Kings- 
ley, in Plays and Puritans and Other Essays (Macmillan, 1889;. 

Chapter V. : The Drama before Shakespeare 

Texts. — The principal texts necessary for a study of this period of the 
drama, up to Marlowe, will be found in Specimens of Preshake- 
spearean Drama, 2 vols., ed. J. M. Manly (Ginn); the third vol- 
ume of this work, soon to be published, will contain a history of 
the drama before Shakespeare. English Miracle Plays, Moralities, 
and Interludes, by A. W. Pollard, contains some pieces not given 
in Manly’s Specimens, and an interesting essay on the origin of the 
drama. For plays of Lyly, Greene, and Peele, see preceding 
section. Marlowe’s complete works are edited by A. H. Bullen 
(Nimmo); his chief plays are in the Mermaid Series (Scribner)^ 
ed. H. Ellis; Dr. Faustus is edited by W. Wagner (Longmans), 
and by A. W. Ward; Edward the Second is edited by A. W. 
Verity (Dent). 

History . and Criticism. — A History of English Dramatic Literature to 
the Death of Queen Anne, by A. W. Ward, new edition, 1899; 
Shakespeare’s Predecessors, by J. A. Symonds ; Shakespeare and 
His Predecessors, by F. S. Boas (Scribner) ; The Influence of 
Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, by J. W. Cunliffe (Macmillan) ; 
The English Religious Drama, by K. L. Bates. W. Hazlitt’s 
Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth gives 
a good general view of the causes leading up to the outburst of 
poetry in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign. See also chapters 
on the early . drama in Ten Brink’s History of English Literature 
and in Jusserand’s Literary History of the English People. Also 
essay on the Predecessors of Shakespeare, in the Essays and 
Studies of J. C. Collins. For Marlowe, see essays by E. Dowden, 
in Transcripts and Studies, and by H. Kingsley, in Fireside 
Studies, and by J. R. Lowell, in The Old English Dramatists. 
For the history of the stage, see A Chronicle History of the Lon- 
don Stage, 1559-1642, by F. G. Fleay. 

Chapter VI. : Shakespeare* 

» 

Biography and Criticism. Extended Works. — Life of W illiam Shake- 
speare, by S. Lee (Macmillan) ^Shakespeare, a critical study of 
his miml and art, by E. Dowden (Harper) ; William Shakespeare, 
a critical study, by G. Brandes (Macmillan) ; Shakespeare, his 
life, art, and characters, with an historical sketch of the origin 
and growth of the drama in England, by H. N. Hudson (Ginn); 

* As available and sufficiently trustworthy editions of Shakespeare are very 

numerous, no texts are given. 


392 


a HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, by R. G. Moulton (Clarendon 
Press) ; A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of Shakespeare, 
by F. G. Fleay (Nimmo) ; William Shakspere, a study in Eliza- 
bethan Literature, by B. Wendell (Scribner); William Shake- 
speare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man, by H. W. Mabie (Macmillan) ; 
Shakespeare the Man, by Goldwin Smith (Doubleday, Page). 

Essays and Studies. —-Introduction to Shakespeare, by E. Dowden 
(Blackie); Shakespeare Primer, by E. Dowden ; Shakespearean 
Primer, by I. Gollancz (Macmillan) ;X Seven Lectures on Shake- 
speare and Milton, by S. T. Coleridge ; Five Lectures on Shake- 
speare, by B. Ten Brink (Holt) ; Studies in Shakespeare, by 
R. G. White (Houghton, Mifflin); Notes and Essays on Shake- 
speare, J. W. Hales ; Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, by W. 
Hazlitt (Bohn’s Standard Library) ; Shakespeare's Female Charac- 
ters, also entitled Characteristics of Women, by Mrs. Jameson; 
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, in W. Hazlitt’s Lectures on the 
English Comic Writers; Shakespeare and Milton, in W. Hazlitt’s 
Lectures on the English Poets ; On Shakespeare’s tragedies, and 
their fitness for stage presentation, in Charles Lamb’s Essays 
of Elia; Shakespeare, or the Poet, in R. W. Emerson’s Repre- 
sentative Men ; Shakespeare Once More, in J. R. Lowell’s Among 
my Books ; Shakespeare’s Kings, in R. L. Stevenson’s Familiar 
Studies of Men and Books ; Shakespeare the Man, in W. Bage- 
hot’s Literary Studies. 

Miscellaneous . — Shakespeare’s Versification, by G. H. Browne (Ginn); 
Shakespeare’s London, by J. F. Ordish (Dent) ; Shakespeare’s 
England, by G. W. Thornbury (Longmans) ; A Chronicle History 
of the London Stage, 1559-1642, by F. G. Fleay; Shakespeare’s 
Holinshed, a comparison of the chronicle and the history plays, by 
W. G. B. Stone (Longmans) ; The English Chronicle Play, by F 
E. Schelling (Macmillan) ; The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Her- 
oines, by Mary Cowden Clark (Armstrong, 1887); Tales from 
Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb (Riverside Library) ; 
Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare, by W. S. Lan- 
dor ; The Italy of the Elizabethan Dramatists, in Violet Paget’s 
Euphorion. 

For language, see Abbott’s Shakespearean Grammar, and 
Schmidt’s Shakespeare Lexicon (Leipsig). 


Chapter VII. : Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors in 

the Drama 


Texts . — All the texts necessary for the study of this period are included 
in the Mermaid Series of Avorks of the old dramatists (Scribner)., 
Ben Jonson’s Alchemist, Volpone, Silent Woman, Sad Shepherd, 


READING GUIDE 


393 


and Poems, are given in Morley’s Universal Library. Several of 
Jonson’s Masques, with others, and an essay on the Masque, in 
H. A. Evans’s English Masques; Jonson’s Timber, ed. E. E. 
Schelling (Ginn). 

Biography and Criticism. — A Biographical Chronicle of the Eng- 
lish Drama, 1559-1642, by F.G. Fleay (Reeves and Turner); Shake- 
speare and Ben Jonson, in W. Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English 
Comic Writers; Life of Ben Jonson, by J. A. Symonds; A 
Study of Ben Jonson, by A. C. Swinburne ; John Webster, 
in E. Gosse’s Seventeenth Century Studies, and in A. C. Swin- 
burne’s Studies in Prose and Poetry ; Beaumont and Fletcher, 
in Swinburne’s Essays in Prose and Poetry; John Ford, in 
Lowell’s Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, and in Swin- 
burne’s Essays and Studies ; Massinger, in A. Symons’s Studies in 
Two Literatures. E. Gosse’s Jacobean Poets treats Jonson, Chap- 
man, Beaumont and Fletcher, Heywood, Middleton, Webster, and 
Massinger. J. R. Lowell’s Old English Dramatists treats (besides 
Marlowe) Webster, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
and Ford. 


Chapter VIII. : Seventeenth Century Non-dramatic Literature 

BEFORE THE RESTORATION 

General Works. — S. Ii. Gardiner’s History of England, 1603-1660- 
G. E. Saintsbury’s Elizabethan Literature. English Lyric Poetry, 
1500-1700, Selection^, with essay, by F. I. Carpenter (Scribner). 

Francis Bacon. Texts. — Essays in Morley’s Universal Library ; Ad- 
vancement of Learning, ed. Wright (Clarendon Press Series); 
both Essays and Advancement of Learning in Macmillan’s Library 
of English Classics; Selections, ed. A. B. Grosart, in The Eliza- 
bethan Library (Stock). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by R. W. Church (English Men 
of Letters); Life and Philosophy, by J. Nichols ; ^ssay by T. B. 
Macaulay ; Bacon, compared as to style with Sir Thomas Browne 
and Jeremy Taylor, in W. Hazlitt’s Lectures on the Literature of 
the Age of Elizabeth. 

John Donne. Texts. — Poems, in Muses’ Library, ed. E. K. Chambers, 
with introduction by G. E. Saintsbury. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life and Letters, by E. Gosse(Dodd, 
Mead) ; John Donne, sometimes Dean of St. Paul’s, by A. Jessopp 
(Houghton, Mifflin) ; Life, in Walton’s Lives, Morley’s Universal 
Library. Essay in E. Dowden’s New Studies, and in E. Gosse’s 
Jacobean Poets. 


394 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

X 

Jeremy Taylor. — Holy Living and Dying, in Bohn’s Standard Library. 
Selections, ed. E. E. Wentworth (Ginn). Life of Jeremy Taylor, 
with a critical examination of his writings, by R. Heber; Essay 
by E. Dowden, in Puritan and Anglican. See also W. Hazlitt’s 
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. 

Sir Thomas Browne. Texts. — Hydriotaphia (Urn-Burial) and Garden 
of Cyrus, in Golden Treasury Series ; ^fteligio Medici and Urn- 
Burial, with introduction by J. A. Symonds, in Camelot Series; 
Religio Medici and other Essays, ed. D. L. Roberts (Stott Library); 
Works, 3 vols., in Bohn’s Library. 

Criticism. — Essays, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by E. 
Dowden, in Puritan and Anglican ; by W. Pater, in Appreciations ; 
by J. Texte, in Etudes de la Litterature Europeenne (Paris, 1898). 
See also W. Hazlitt’s Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. 

The Cavalier Poets.— Carew, in Muses’ Library ; Lovelace, Suckling, 
ed. W. C. Hazlitt, in Library of Old Authors. For selections, see 
Cavalier and Courtier Lyrists, an anthology of minor seventeenth 
century verse, in Canterbury Poets Series (Scott); English Lyric V 
Poetry, 1500-1700, Selections, with essay, by E. I. Carpenter 
(Scribner). See also Ward’s English Poets. 

William Browne. — Poetical Works, with introduction by A. H. Bullen, 
in the Muses’ Library. See Gosse’s Jacobean Poets. 

George Wither. — Poems, with introduction by H. Morley, in Compan- 
ion Poet Series (Iioutledge). Essay on the poetry of Wither, in 
C. Lamb’s Miscellaneous Essays. See also Gosse’s Jacobean 
Poets. ^ 

Isaak Walton. — Complete Angler, with introduction by A. Lang 
(Dent) ; Complete Angler, in Cassell’s National Library ; Walton's 
Lives (of Donne, Herbert, etc.), in Morley’s Universal Library. 
Essay by J. R. Lowell, in Latest Literary Essays. 

Robert Herrick. — Hesperides and Noble Numbers, ed. A. Pollard, 
with introduction by A. C. Swinburne (Lawrence and Bullen); 
Hesperides, ed. E. Rhys, in Canterbury Poets ; Selections, in 
Golden Treasury Series, and Athenaeum Press Series. Essays, by 
E. Gosse, in Seventeenth Century Studies, and A. C. Swinburne, 
in Studies in Prose and Poetry. 

Giles Fletcher. — Complete Poems, ed. A. B. Grosart, Fuller’s 
Worthies Library. See Gosse’s Jacobean Poets. 

George Herbert. — The Temple, in Morley’s Universal Library, and in 
the Temple Classics; Poems, with selections from his prose, and 
Walton’s Life of Herbert, ed. E. Rhys, in Canterbury Poets 
Series. Essay, by E. Dowden, in Puritan and Anglican. 

Henry Vaughan.— Poetical Works, ed. H. C. Beeching, in Muses’ 
Library ; Sacred Poems, ed. H. F. Lyte, in Aldine edition. 


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395 


Essays, by E. Dowden, in Puritan and Anglican ; by L. I. Guiney, 
in A Little English Gallery. 

Richard Crashaw.— Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, Fuller’s Worthies Li- 
brary; Works, ed. Turnbull, Library of Old Authors. Essay, by 
E. Gosse, in Seventeenth Century Studies. 

Andrew Marvell.— Poems, ed. G. A. Aitken, Muses’ Library. Essays, 
by H. Rogers, in Essays Biographical and Critical ; by A. C. Ben- 
son, in his Essays. 

Abraham Cowley. — Complete works, Avith introduction by A. B. Gro- 
sart, Chertsey Worthies Library; Cowley’s Essays, ed. Hurd 
(London, 1868). Essay in Gos^e’s Seventeenth Century Studies, 
and in W. Stebbing’s Some Verdicts of History Reversed. 

John Milton. Texts.— Poetical Works, ed. Masson, Globe edition;^ 
Poetical Works, with a translation of the Latin poems, ed. Moody, 
Cambridge edition (Houghton, Mifflin) ; Prose Writings, ed. Mor- 
ley, Carisbrooke Library; Prose Writings, Bohn’s Standard Li- 
brary. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by M. Pattison (English Men of 
Letters); Life, by W. Raleigh (Putnam); Life, by R. Garnett 
(Great Writers Series); Life, by Dr. Johnson, in Lives of the 
Poets ; the most available edition is Six Chief Lives from Johnson’s 
Lives of the Poets, ed. M. Arnold (Macmillan) ; Life and Times, 

7 vols., by D. Masson. Essays, by J. R. Lowell, in Among My 
Books and in Latest Literary Essays ; by M. Arnold, in Essays in 
Criticism ; by E. DoAvden, in Puritan and Anglican and in Tran- 
scripts and Studies ; by W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies. Addi- 
son’s Criticism on Paradise Lost, ed. A. S. Cook (Ginn). 

John Bdnyan. Texts. — Grace Abounding, in Cassell’s National Li- 
brary; Pilgrim’s Progress, in Golden Treasury Series and River- y 
side Literature Series. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J. A. Froude (English 
Men of Letters). Essays, ^by T. B. Macaulay; by G. E. Wood- 
berry, in Makers of Literature ; by E. DoAvden, in Puritan and 
Anglican ; by Tulloch, in English Puritanism and its Leaders. 

Chapter IX. : The Restoration 

General Works.— ^Macaulay’s History of England; The Age of Dry- 
den, by R. Garnett (Bell); Le Publique et les Hommes de Lettres 
en Angleterre, 1660-1744, Beljame; From Shakespeare to Pope, 
by E. Gosse, treats of the rise of the classical school; Ben Jonson 
and the Classical School, by F. E. Schelling (reprinted from Vol. 

13 of Modern Language Association Publications, Baltimore, 
1898). 

John Diiyden. Texts. — Poetical Works, ed. W. D. Chrisue, Globe 


396 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

V" 

edition; Select Poems, ed. W. D. Christie (Clarendon Press); The 
Dryden Anthology, ed. E. Arber (Frowde) ; Essays, selected and 
edited by W. P. Ker (Clarendon Press) ; Translation of iEneid, 
in Morley’s Universal Library. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by G. E. Saintsbury (English 
Men of Letters); Life, by Dr. Johnson (for edition see under Mil- 
ton). Essays, by J. R. Lowell, in Among My Books ; by J. C. Col- 
lins, in Essays and Studies ; by D. Masson, in The Three Devils and 
Other Essays; by W. Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English Poets. 

Samuel Butler. — Hudibras, in Morley’s Universal Library. Essay, by 
E. Dowden, in Puritan and Anglican. 

Samuel Pepys.— Diary, with selections from his correspondence, ed. 
Lord Braybrooke, in Chandos Library (Warne). Samuel Pepys 
and the World he Lived in, by H. B. Wheatley (Scribner) ; Essay, 
by R. L. Stevenson, in Familiar Studies of Men and Books (Scrib- 
ner). 

Sir William Davenant. — See E. Gosse’s From Shakespeare to 
Pope. 

Thomas Otway. — Plays, ed. R. Noel (Mermaid Series). £tude sur 
Thomas Otway, par A. de Grisy (Paris, 1868). 

William Wycherley. — Plays, ed.“ W. C. Ward (Mermaid Series). See 
Wycherley, Congreve, etc., in W. Hazlitt’s Lectures on the Eng- 
lish Comic Writers. 

William Congreve. — Plays, ed. A. C. Ewald (Mermaid Series). Life, 
by E. Gosse (Great Writers); Congreve and Addison, in W. 
M. Thackeray’s English Humorists. See also under Wycherley. 
For Wycherley, Congreve, and the Eighteenth Century comedy, 
see C. Lamb’s essay On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Cen- 
tury, and G. Meredith’s Essay on Comedy and the Comic Spirit 
(Scribner). 

Chapter X. : The Eighteenth Century : The Reign of 
Classicism 

General Works.— History of England in the Eighteenth Century, by 
W . E. H. Lecky; English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, by 
L. Stephen; History of English Literature in the Eighteenth 
Century, by T. S. Perry ; Eighteenth Century Literature, by E. 
Gosse ; The Age of Pope, by J. Dennis ; The Age of Johnson, by 
T. Seccombe (Macmillan); Le Publique et les Hommes de Let- 
tres en Angleterre, 1660-1744. For the early history of Journal- 
ism, see H. R. Fox Bourne’s English Newspapers, chapters 1-5 
(Chatto and Windus, 1887). 

Jonathan Swift. Texts — Works, ed. T. Scott (Bell); Selections, ed. 
C. T. Winchester (Ginn); Selections, ed. H. Craik (Clarendon 


READING GUIDE 


397 


Press) ; Selections, in Carisbrooke Library ; Journal to Stella, ed. 

G. A. Aitken (Putnam) ; Selected Letters, in Eighteenth Century 
Letters and Letter- Writers, ed. R. B. Johnson. 

Biography and Criticism.— Life, by J. C. Collins (Chatto and 
Windus) ; Life, by H.Craik (Murray) ; Life, by L. Stephen (English 
Men of Letters); Life, by Dr. Johnson (for edition see under 
Milton). Essays, by W. M. Thackeray, in English Humorists; 
by D. Masson, in the Three Devils and Other Essays ; by A. Dob- 
son, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Joseph Addison. Texts.— Works, ed. H. G. Bohn (Bohn’s British 
Classics) ; Selections in Athenaeum Press Series, Golden Treasury > 
Series, Camelot Series, Chandos Classics, etc. 

Biography and Criticism.— Life, by W. J. Courthope (English 
Men of Letters) ; Life, by Dr. Johnson (for edition see under 
Milton). ^Essays, by T. B. Macaulay (numerous school editions); 
by E. Gosse, in Among My Books ; Congreve and Addison, in W. 

M. Thackeray’s English Humorists. 

Sir Richard Steele. Texts.— Selected Essays from the Spectator, ed. 

J. Habberton (Putnam) ; Selected Essays from the Tatler and 
Guardian, together with Macaulay’s lives of Steele and Addison* 
(Bangs); Selections, ed. G. R. Carpenter (Athenasum Press 
Series); The Lover, and other papers by Steele and Addison, in 
Camelot Series; Steele’s Plays, ed. G. A. Aitken (Mermaid 
Series). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by G. A. Aitken (London, 
1889); Life, by A. Dobson (English Worthies). See Thackeray’s 
English Humorists, and u Steele’s Letters,” in A. Dobson’s Eigh- 
teenth Century Vignettes. 

Lord Chesterfield. — Letters to his Son, ed. C. Strachey (Putnam), ^ 
also in Camelot Series, and in Eighteenth Century Letters, Vol. II., 
ed. R. B. Johnson (New York, 1898). Essay, by J. C. Collins, in 
Essays and Studies, and by Sainte-Beuve in English Portraits 
(Holt). 

Alexander Pope. Texts. — Poetical Works, ed. A. W. Ward, Globe 
edition; Essay on Man, ed. M. Pattison (Clarendon Press) ; Satire^” 
and Epistles, ed. M. Pattison (Clarendon Press); Pope’s Iliad, 
Books 1, 6, 22-24 (numerous school editions); Selections from 
Poetical Works, in Canterbury Poets Series; Letters, in English 
Letters and Letter- Writers of the Eighteenth Century, ed. H. 
Williams (Bell). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by L. Stephen (English Men of 
Letters) ; Life, by Dr. Johnson (for edition see under Milton). Es- 
says, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by Sainte-Beuve, in 
English Portraits ; by J. R. Lowell, in My Study Windows ; by T. 


398 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


De Quincey, in Biographical Essays, and also in his Essays on the 
Poets ; by W. S. Lilly, in Essays and Speeches. See also W. M. 
Thackeray’s English Humorists; W. Hazlitt’s Lectures on the 
Poets; and J. Warton’s Genius and Writings of Pope 
Samuel Johnson. Texts. — Essays, selected and edited by G. B. Hill 
(Dent); Essays, selected, in Camelot Series; Rasselas, ed. G. B. 
Hill (Clarendon Press) ; Kasselas, ed. H. Morley, in Morley’s 
Universal Library; Letters, ed. G. B. Hill (Clarendon Press); 
Letters, selected, in Eighteenth Century Letters, ed. li. B. John- 
son (New York, 1898); Six Chief Lives from Johnson’s Lives of 
the Poets, with Macaulay’s Life of Johnson, ed. M. Arnold (Mac- 
millan). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by L. Stephen (English Men of 
Letters) ; Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. M. Morris, in Library of 
English Classics (Macmillan). Dr. Johnson, his Eriends and 
Critics, by G. B. Hill (Smith Elder) ; Essay, by L. Stephen, in 
Hours in a Library, and by T. B. Macaulay (not to be confused 
with Macaulay’s Life of Johnson, above). ^ 

Oliver Goldsmith. Texts. — Poems, Plays, and Essays, ed. J. Aikin 
and H. T. Tuckerman (Crowell); Miscellaneous Works, ed. D. 
Masson, Globe edition; Vicar of Wakefield, Poems, and Plays, in 
Morley’s Universal Library; The Goldsmith Anthology, ed. E. 
Arber (Frowde). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by W. Black (English Men of 
Letters) ; Life, by A. Dobson (Great Writers) ; Life, by J Forster. 
Essays, by A. Dobson, in his Miscellanies, by T De Quincey, in 
Essays on the Poets; by T. B. Macaulay. See also Thackeray’s 
English Humorists. ^ 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan. — Plays, ed. R. Dircks, in Camelot Series; 
Plays, in Morley’s Universal Library, and in Macmillan’s Library 
of English Classics. Life, by L. C. Sanders (Great Writers), and 
by M. O. W. Oliphant (English Men of Letters). ^ 

Edward Gibbon. Texts. — Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. 
J. B. Bury (Methuen) ; Student’s Gibbon, abridged (Murray) ; 
Memoirs, with essay by W. I). Howells (Osgood) ; Memoirs, ed. 
G. B. Hill (Methuen) ; Memoirs, in Carisbrooke Library and in 
Athenaeum Press Series. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J. C. Morison (English 
Men of Letters). Essays, by W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies ; 
by F. Harrison, in Ruskin, Mill and other literary estimates ; by 
C. A. Sainte-Beuve, in English Portraits. 

Edmund Burke. Texts. — Select Works^ed. E. J. Payne (Clarendon 
Press Series) ; Selections, ed. B Perry (Holt) ; American Speeches 
and Letters on the Irish Question, in Morley’s Universal Library. 


READING GUIDE 


399 


Essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful, Temple Classics (Mac- 
millan). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J . Morley (English Men of 
Letters). See E. Dowden’s French Revolution and English Litera- 
ture. 

Chapter XI. : The Eighteenth Century Novel. (See Below) 

Chapter XII. : The Reviya'l of Romanticism 

General Works. — English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, by 
H. A. Beers ; The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, 
by W. L. Phelps ; English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, 
by T. S. Perry ; Eighteenth Century Literature, by E. Gosse ; 
Literary History of England, by Mrs. Oliphant (opening chapters). 

James Thomson. Texts. — The Seasons and Castle of Indolence, ed. 
H. E. Greene (Athenaeum Press Series); Works, Aldine edition. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by W. Bayne (Scribner); 
James Thomson, sa vie et ses oeuvres, by Leon Morel (Hachette, 
Paris). “ Thomson and Cowper,” in W. Hazlitt’s Lectures on the 
English Poets. 

William Collins. — Works, Aldine edition. Essay in Swinburne’s 
Miscellanies. For further criticism see general works, above. 

Edward Young. — Works, Aldine edition. See Beers’s English Ro- 
manticism in the Eighteenth Century. 

Thomas Gray. Texts. — Works in Yerse and Prose, ed. E. Gosse 
(Macmillan) f^Poems, in Routledge’s Pocket Library; Poems of 
Gray, Beattie, and Collins, in Chandos Classics (Warne) ; Selec- 
tions from Gray, ed. W. L. Phelps (Athenaeum Press). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by E. Gosse (English Men of 
Letters); Life, by Dr. Johnson (for edition see under Johnson). 
Essays, by M. Arnold, in Essays in Criticism ; by J. R. Lowell, in 
Latest Literary Essays; by A. Dobson, in Eighteenth Century 
Vignettes ; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library. See also The 
Influence of Old Norse Literature upon English Literature, by C. 
H. Nordby (Macmillan). 

Thomas Percy. — Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in Chandos Clas- 
sics (Warne) ; and in Bohn’s Standard Library. More recent bal- 
lad collections, taken from Percy and other sources, are : The 
Ballad Book, ed. W. Allingham ; Old English Ballads, edited, with 
valuable preface, by F. B. Gummere (Athenaeum Press Series). 
See, besides general works above, “ The Revival of Ballad Poetry 
in the Eighteenth Century,” in J. W. Hales’s Folia Litteraria. 

James Macpherson. — Ossian, in Canterbury Poets. See Beers’s Eng- 
lish Romanticism, etc. 


400 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Thomas Chatterton.— Poetical Works, in Canterbury Poets. Life, by 
Sir D. Wilson (Macmillan). Essay, by D. Masson, in Essays 
Biographical and Critical. 

George Crabbe. Texts. — Selected Poems, in Cassell’s National Li- 
brary, and in Canterbury Poets ; The Borough, in Macmillan’s 
Temple Classics. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by T. E. Kebbel (Great Writ- 
ers). Essays, by G. E. Woodberry, in Makers of Literature ; by L. 
Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by G. E. Saintsbury, in Essays 
in English Literature, 1780-1860. ^ 

William Cowper. Texts. — Selected Poems, in Cassell’s National Li- 
brary, in Athenaeum Press Series, and in Canterbury Poets ; 
Poetical Works, in Globe edition, in Aldine edition and in Chan- 
dos Classics. Letters, ed. W. Benham (Macmillan). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by Goldwin Smith (English Men 
of Letters) ; Life, by R. Southey. Essays, by L. Stephen, in Hours 
in a Library ; by W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies ; by C. A. Sainte- 
Beuve, in English Portraits ; by A. Dobson, in Eighteenth Cen- 
tury Vignettes; Bunyan, Cowper, and Channing, in G. E. Wood- 
berry’s Makers of Literature. 

William Blake. Texts. — Poems, with memoir by W. M. Rossetti, 
Aldine edition ; Poems, with specimens of pro^e writings, in Can- 
terbury Poets; Complete Works, with elaborate critical apparatus 
and illustrations from Blake’s Prophetical Books, ed. E. J Ellis 
and W. B. Yeats (London, 1893). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by A. Gilchrist (Macmillan) ; 
Life, by A. T. Story (London, 1893); William Blake, a Critical 
Study, by A. C. Swinburne (Chatto and Windus). Essay, by A. C. 
Benson, in his Essays. 

Robert Burns. Texts. — Poetical Works, with introduction by W. E. 
Henley (Houghton, Mifflin) ; also in Aldine edition, in Claren- 
don Press Series, and in Canterbury Poets ; Letters, selected, in 
Camelot Series. 

Biography and Criticism. —Life, by W. E. Henley (see Cam- 
bridge edition, above ; also published separately) ; Life, by J. C. 
Shairp (English Men of Letters); Life, by G. Setoun (Scribner). 

‘ Essays, by T. Carlyle (a convenient edition is included in Long- 
man’s English Classics) ; by R. L. Stevenson, in Familiar Studies of 
Men and Books ; by W. H. Thorne, in Modern Idols ; by Stop- 
ford Brooke, in Theology in the English Poets ; by J. Forster, in 
Great Teachers. Burns and the Old English Ballads, in W. 
Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Poets. 


READING GUIDE 


401 


Chapter XIII. : The Triumph of Romanticism 

General Works.— English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century, by 
H. A. Beers; Nineteenth Century Literature, by G. E. Saints- 
bury ; The French Revolution and English Literature, by E. 
Dowden ; Studies in Literature, 1789-1877, by E. Dowden ; Lit- 
erary History of England, by Mrs. Oliphant. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Texts. — Poetical Works, ed. R. Garnett, 
in Muses Library ; Poetical Works, ed. J. D. Campbell (Macmil-^ 
lan); also in Aldine edition, Athenasum Press Series, and Can- 
terbury Poets; Selections from prose writings, ed. C. M. Gayley 
(Ginn) ; ed. H. A. Beers (Holt) ; Lectures on Shakespeare and 
other English Poets (Bohn’s Standard Library). 

Biography and Criticism.— Life, by H. D. Traill (English Men 
of Letters). Essays, by J. R. Lowell, in Democracy and Other Ad- 
dresses; by E. Dowden, in New Studies in Literature; by G. E. 
Saintsbury, in Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860; by W. 
Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age ; by W. Pater, in Appreciations ; 
by G. E. Woodberry, in Makers of Literature; by Stopford 
Brooke, in Theology in the English Poets ; by A. C. Swinburne, 
in Essays and Studies ; by J. Forster, in Great Teachers. See 
also “ My First Acquaintance with Poets,” by W. Hazlitt, and 
notices of Coleridge in the writings of De Quincey. 

William Wordsworth. Texts. — Poetical Works, with introduction by 
J. Morley, Globe edition ; Selections, with essay by M. Arnold,*' 
in Golden Treasury Series; Selections, ed. E. Dowden (Ginn); 
Selections from prose writings, ed. C. M. Gayley (Ginn) ; Pref- 
aces and Essays on Poetry, ed. A. J. George (Heath). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by F W. H. Myers (English 
Men of Letters) ; Early Life, a study of the Prelude, by E. Legonis, 
translated by J. M. Matthews (Dent). A Primer of Wordsworth, 
by L. Magnus (Methuen); Helps to the Study of Arnold’s Words- 
worth, by R. Wilson (Macmillan). Essays, by J. R. Lowell, in 
Among My Books, and in Democracy and Other Addresses ; by 
W. Pater, in Appreciations ; by R. H. Hutton, in Literary Essays, 
and in Essays Theological and Literary ; by L. Stephen, in Hours 
in a Library; Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, by W. 
Bagehot, in Literary Studies ; by R. W. Church, in Dante and 
Other Essays ; by W. Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age. 

Robert Southey. Texts. — Poetical Works (Crowell) ; Selections, in * 
Canterbury Poets ; Life of Nelson, in Morley’s Universal Library, * 
in Temple Classics (Dent), and in English Classics (Longmans). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by E. Dowden (English Men of 
Letters). Essay, by G. E. Saintsbury, in Studies in English Litera- 


402 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ture, 1780-1860, 2d series ; by W. Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the 

Thomas Campbell. — Poetical Works, Aldine edition. - ^ Life, by J. C. 
Hadden (Scribner). Essay, by G. E. Saintsbury, in Studies in 
English Literature, 1780-1860, 2d series. ^ 

George Gordon, Lord Byron. Texts. — Selections, with essay by M. 
Arnold, in Golden Treasury Series; Selections, ed. F. I. Carpen- 
ter (Holt) ; Letters, in Camelot Series. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J. Nichols (English Men of 
Letters); Life, by It. Noel (Great Writers). Essays, by M. Arnold, 
in Essays in Criticism (same as that prefixed to Selections, above); 
by W. Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age ; by T. B. Macaulay, in 


his Essays. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley. Texts. — Poetical Works, ed. E. Dowden, 
Globe edition; Poetical Works, ed. G. E. Woodberry, Cambridge 
edition ; Selections, in Golden Treasury Series and in Heath’s 
English Classics ; Essays and Letters, in Camelot Series. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by W. Sharp (Great Writers) ; 
Life, by J. A. Symonds (English Men of Letters) ; Life, by E. Dow- 
den (Kegan Paul). A Shelley Primer, by H. S. Salt (London, 
1887). Essays, by G. E. Woodberry, in Makers of Literature ; by 
W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies ; by M. Arnold, in Essays in 
Criticism; by R. H. Hutton, in Literary Essays, and in Essays 
Theological and Literary ; by J. Forster, in Great Teachers. 

Thomas Moore. — Poetical Works, in Cliandos Classics (Warne), and in 
Canterbury Poets. Life and Works, by A. J. Symington (Harper) ; 
Essay, by G. E. Saintsbury, in Essays in English Literature, 1780- 


✓ 


* 


1860. 

Leigh Hunt. Texts. — Essays, with introduction by A. Symons, in 
Camelot Series; Dramatic Essays, selected and edited by W. 
Archer and R. W. Lowe (Scott) ; Selections from prose and verse, 
Cavendish Library (Warne) ; Stories from the Italian Poets, 
Knickerbocker Nuggets Series (Putnam). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by W. C. Monkhouse (Great 
Writers). Essays, by T. B. Macaulay, in his Essays, by G. E. 
Saintsbury, in Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860; by Mrs. 
Field, in a Shelf of Old Books ; Thomas Moore and Leigh Hunt, 
in W. Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age. 

John Keats. Texts. — Poetical Works, with letters, ed. H. E. Scudder, 
Cambridge edition; Poetical Works, with life by Lord Houghton, 
Aldine edition ; Poems (not quite complete), ed. Palgrave, in Gol- ^ 
den Treasury Series ; Poems, ed. A. Bates (Athenaeum Press 
Series) ; Letters, ed. H. B. Forman. 

Biography and Criticism.— by S. Colvin (English Men of 


READING GUIDE 


403 


Letters) ; Life, by W. M. Rossetti (Great Writers). Essays, by J. R. 
Lowell, in Among My Books ; by M. Arnold, in Essays in Criti- 
cism; by A. C. Swinburne, in Miscellanies; by W. H. Hudson, 
in Studies in Interpretation ; by D. Masson, in Wordsworth, Shel- 
ley, Keats, and Other Essays. ^ 

William Hazlitt. Texts. — Essays, selected, in Camelot Series; Dra- 
matic Essays, selected and edited by W. Archer and R. W. Lowe 
(Scott); Lectures on the English Comic Writers, in Temple Clas- 
sics (Dent) ; Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, in Bohn’s Stan- 
dard Library ; Selections from complete works, with introduction 
by A. Ireland, in Cavendish Library (WarneX 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by A. Birrell (English Men of 
Letters, in preparation). Essays, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Li- 
brary ; by G. E. Saintsbury, in Essays in English Literature, 
1780-1860; by L. 1. Guiney, in A Little English Gallery; by T. 
De Quincey, in Essays on the Poets and Other English Writers. 

Charles Lamb. Texts. — Poems, Plays, and Miscellaneous Essays, ed.Jir 
A. Ainger (Macmillan) ; Essays of Elia, in Camelot Classics ; Dra- 
matic Essays, with introduction by Brander Matthews (Dodd, 
Mead) ; Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, in Bohn’s Anti- 
quarian Library ; Tales from Shakespeare, Riverside Library 
(Houghton, Mifflin). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by A. Ainger (English Men of 
Letters). Essays, by T. De Quincey, in Biographical Essays ; by G. 
E. Woodberry, in Makers of Literature; by W. Pater, in Appre- 
ciations ; “ Lamb and Wither,” in A. C. Swinburne’s Miscellanies; 

“ Lamb and Keats,” in F. Harrison’s Ruskin, Mill, and other Lit- 
erary Estimates. 

Thomas De Quincey. Texts. — Complete Works, ed. D. Masson (Edin- 
burgh, 1889); Confessions of an English Opium Eater, in Temple 
Classics (Dent) ; Joan of Arc and English Mail Coach, ed. J. M. 
Hart (Holt) ; Revolt of a Tartar Tribe, ed. C. E. Baldwin (Long- 
mans); Selections, ed. Bliss Perry (Doubleday & Page). * 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by D. Masson (English Men of 
Letters). Essays, by G. E. Saintsbury, in Essays in English Litera- 
ture, 1780-1860, 1st series; by D. Masson, in Wordsworth, Shel- 
ley, Keats, and other Essays ; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a 
Library. 

Walter Savage Landor. Texts . — Complete Works, ed. C. G. Crump 
(London, 1891) ; Imaginary Conversations, selected by H. Ellis, 
in Camelot Series ; Pericles and Aspasia, ed. H. Ellis, in Camelot 
Series ; Select Poems in Canterbury Poets. X 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by S. Colvin (English Men of 
Letters). Essays, by E. Dowden, in Studies in Literature, 1789- 


404 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


1877; by G. E. Woodberry, in Makers of Literature; by L„ 
Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by G. E. Saintsbury, in Studies 
in English Literature, 1780-1860, 2d series; by A. C. Swin- 
burne, in Miscellanies. See also E. C. Stedman’s Victorian 
Poets. 

Thomas Hood. Texts. — Choice Works, in prose and verse (Chatto 
Windus) ; Selected Poems, with selected poems of Leigh Hunt, in 
Canterbury Poets. 

Criticism. — Essay, by G. E. Saintsbury, in Essays in English 
Literature, 1780-1860, 2d series; “Hood and Mrs. Browning,” 
in W. J. Dawson’s Makers of Modern English. See also E. C. 
Stedman’s Victorian Poets. 

Chapter XIV. : The Victorian Era 

General Works. — A History of Our Own Times, by J. M’Carthy; 
Nineteenth Century Literature, by G. E. Saintsbury; Victorian 
Poets, by E. C. Stedman; An Anthology of Victorian Poetry, by 

E. C. Stedman ; A Literary History of England in the Nineteenth 
Century, by Mrs. Oliphant; English Romanticism in the Nine- 
teenth Century, by H. A. Beers. “ Victorian Literature,” in E. 
Dowden’s Transcripts and Studies, gives an interesting bird’s-eye 
view. 

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay. Texts. — Essays and Lays of ^ 
Ancient Rome, 27 essays in one volume (Longmans, 1896) ; Essays 
on Addison and Milton, in Longman’s English Classics ; Essays 
on Johnson, in Longman’s English Classics. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J. A. C. Morison (English 
Men of Letters) ; Life, by G. O. Trevelyan. Essays, by L. Stephen, 
in Hours in a Library ; by W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies ; by 

F. Harrison, in Studies in Early Victorian Literature ; by G. E. 
Saintsbury, in Corrected Impressions. 

Thomas Carlyle. Texts. — Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 1 vol. 
(Appleton, 1874); French Revolution, 3 vols. (Scribner, 1896); 
Life of Sterling (Scribner, 1897) ; Heroes, in Athenaeum Press 
Series ; Past and Present, Chartism, and Sartor Resartus, 1 vol. 
(Harper); Essay on Burns, in Longman’s English Classics, and 
various other school editions. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by R. Garnett (Great Writers); 
Life, by J. Nichol (English Men of Letters). Essays, by J. R. 
Lowell, in My Study Windows ; by R. H. Hutton, in Modern 
Guides of English Thought ; by F. Harrison, in Studies in Early 
Victorian Literature ; by J. M. Robertson, in Modern Human- 
ists ; by W. C. Brownell, in Victorian Prose Masters ; by W. S. 


READING GUIDE 


405 


Hilly, in Four English Humorists of the Nineteenth Century ; 
“ Dr. Johnson and Carlyle,” in J. Burroughs’s Indoor Studies. 
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Texts. — Works, Globe edition; Works, 
^ Cambridge edition ; Select Poems, ed. W. J. Rolfe (Houghton, 
Mifflin); numerous school editions of The Princess, In Memo- 
riam, etc. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life and Letters, by Hallaru Ten- 
nyson (Macmillan) ; Life, by R. F. Horton (Dent) ; Life, by A. 
Waugh (U. S. Book Co.). The Poetry of Tennyson, by Henry 
van Dyke (Scribner) ; Tennyson, his Art and his Relation to 
Modern Life, by Stopford Brooke ; Tennyson as a Religious 
Teacher, by C. F. G. Masterman ; A Primer of Tennyson, by W. 
M. Dixon (Methuen). Essays, by E. Dowden, in Studies in Lit- 
erature, 1789-1877 ; by R. H. Hutton, in Literary Essays ; by L. 
E. Gates, in Studies and Appreciations ; by F. Harrison, in Rus- 
kin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates. See also E. C. Sted- 
man’s Victorian Poets; IL B. Forman’s Our Living Poets; J. 
Forster’s Great Teachers ; F. W. H. Myers’s Science and a Future 
Life. 

Robert Browning. Texts. — Political Works, complete in 1 vol., 
Cambridge edition (Houghton, Mifflin) ; Poetical Works, 2 vols. 
(Macmillan, 1896) ; Select Poems (Harper): Principal Shorter 
Poems (Appleton). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by W. Sharp (Great Writers); 
Life, by A. Waugh, Westminster Biographies (Small May- 
nard) ; An Introduction to the Study of Browning, by A. Symons 
(Cassell); same, by H. Corson (Heath); Handbook to Works of 
Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr (Bell). Essays, by R. H. 
Hutton, in Literary Essays, and in Essays Theological and Liter- 
ary; by E. Dowden, in Studies in Literature, 1789-1877 ; by J. 
Jacobs, in Literary Studies ; by J. J. Chapman, in Emerson and 
Other Essays ; by E. C. Stedman, in Victorian Poets. See also 
Browning’s Criticism of Life, by W. F. Revell (Sonnenschein); 
Browning’s Message to His Time, by E. Berdoe (Sonnenschein); 
Personalia, by E. Gosse (Houghton, Mifflin); Great Teachers, by 
J. Forster ; Poets and Problems, by G. W. Cooke. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Texts. — Poetical Works, 1 vol. 

(Macmillan); Poetical Works, 1 vol., Cambridge edition.^ 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J. H. Ingram ; Essays, 
by E. C. Stedman, in Victorian Poets ; by A. C. Benson, in his 
Essays ; by G. B. Smith, in Poets and Novelists ; by Sarrazin, in 
Po6tes Modernes de l’Angleterre (Paris) ; by J. Texte, in Etudes 
de litterature europeenne (Paris, 1898). 

Matthew Arnold. — Poetical Works, complete in 1 vol. (Macmillan); 


406 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

. 4T 

Selected Poems, in Golden Treasury Series ; Selections from 
Prose Writings, with introductory essay, by L. E. Gates (Holt). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by H. W. Paul (English Men 
of Letters, in preparation) ; Life, by G. E. Saintsbury (Black- 
wood). Essays, by R. H. Hutton, in Literary Essays (Arnold’s 
poetry); by L. E. Gates, in Three Studies in Literature (also pre- 
fixed to prose selections, above); by L. E. Gates, in Studies and 
Appreciations (The Return to Conventional Life); by R. H. 
Hutton, in Modern Guides of English Thought ; by W. C. Brow- 
nell, in Victorian Prose Masters; by G. E. Woodberry, in Makers 
of Literature ; by E. Harrison, in liuskin, Mill, and other Literary 
Estimates ; by J. M. Robertson, in Modern Humanists ; by J. 
Jacobs, in Literary Studies ; by W. H. Hudson, in Studies in In- 
terpretation ; by J. Burroughs, in Indoor Studies. 

John Ruskin. Texts.— No good cheap edition of Ruskin exists; the 
standard edition is the Brantwood, ed. C. E. Norton. Essays and -4 
Letters, selected by L. G. Hufford (Ginn) ; A Ruskin Anthology, 
by W. S. Kennedy (New York, 1886) ; An Introduction to the 
Writings of Ruskin (selections), by V. D. Scudder (Heath); Wild 
Olive and Munera Pulveris, 1 vol. (U. S. Book Co.); Wild Olive 
and Sesame and Lilies, 1 vol. (Burt). 

Biography and Criticism. — John Ruskin; by Mrs. Mey- 
nell (Dodd, Mead) ; Life, by W. G. Collingwood (Houghton, 
Mifflin); The Work of John Ruskin, by C. Waldstein (Harper); 
John Ruskin, Social Reformer, by J. A. Hobson (Estes). 
Essays, by W. C. Brownell, in Victorian Prose Masters ; 
by J. M. Robertson, in Modern Humanists; by F. Har- 
rison, in Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates; by G. E. 
Saintsbury, in Corrected Impressions; by J. Forster, in Great 
Teachers; by W. J. Stillman, in The Old Rome and the New, 
and Other Essays. 

John Henry Newman. Apologia pro Vita Sua, and Idea of a Univer- 
sity (Longmans) ; Selections, with introductory essay, by L. E. 
Gates (Holt). 

Biography and Criticism. — Cardinal Newman, by R. H. Hutton 
(Houghton, Mifflin); Cardinal Newman, the Story of his Life, 
by J. H. Jennings; Newman, sa Vie et ses CEuvres, by L. F. 
Faure (Paris, 1901); The Oxford Movement, 1833-1845, by R. W. 
Church (London, 1891). Essays, by R H. Hutton, in Modern 
Guides of English Thought; by R. W. Church, in Occasional 
Papers, Vol. II. (six papers on Newman); by A. B. Donaldson, 
in Five Great Oxford Leaders (London, 1900); by L. E. Gates 
(Newman as a prose writer), in Three Studies in Literature (also 
prefixed to selections, above); by W S. Lilly, in Essays and 
Speeches; by J. Jacobs, in Literary Studies. 


HEADING GUIDE 


407 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti —Poetical Works, 2 vols., ed. W. M. Ros- 
setti (London, 1901). Life, by J. Knight (Great Writers)*. Essays, 
by A. C. Swinburne, in Miscellanies; by H. B. Forman, in Our 
Living Poets; by Sarrazin, in Poetes Modernes de l’Angleterre 
(Hachette). 

Christina Rossetti. -Poems, 2 vols. (Macmillan). Essays, by A. 
Symons, in Studies in Two Literatures; by A. C. Benson, in his 
Essays; by H. B. Forman, in Our Living Poets. 

William Morris. Texts. — The Defense of Guenevere (Ellis 
White); The Early Paradise, 1 vol. (Longmans, 1896); Sigurd 
the Volsung; Story of the Glittering Plain and The House of the 
Wolfings (Reeves and Turner) ; The Story of the Yolsungs (Cam- 
el°t Series) ; Chief socialistic writings in William Morris, Poet, 
Artist, and Socialist (Humboldt Publishing Co.) 

Biography and Criticism.— Life, by J. W. Mackail, 2 vols. 
(Longmans); Wm. Morris, his Art, Writings, and Public Life, by 
A. Valance (Bell). Essays, by H. B. Forman, in Our Living 
Poets; by W. J. Dawson, in Makers of Modern English; by A. 
Symons, in Studies in Two Literatures ; by G. E. Saintsbury, in 
Corrected Impressions. See also The Influence of Old Norse 
Literature upon English Literature, by C. H. Nordby (Mac- 
millan). 

Algernon Charles Swinburne. Texts. — Complete Works (Chatto 
and Windus) ; Poems and Ballads, with Atalanta in Calydon and 
Erechtheus, 1 vol. (Lovell) ; Select Poems (Rivington). 

Biography and Criticism. — A. C. Swinburne, A Study, by T. 
Wratislaw. Essays, by II. B. Forman, in Our Living Poets ; by 
J. R. Lowell (Swinburne’s Tragedies), in My Study Windows ; by 
G. E. Saintsbury, in Corrected Impressions ; by Sarrazin, Poetes 
Modernes de l’Angleterre (Hachette). 

Chapters XI. and XV. : The Novel 

General Works — The English Novel, to Waverley (Scribner), by W. 
A. Raleigh ; The Development of the English Novel, by W. L. 
Cross (Macmillan) ; The Evolution of the English Novel, by F. II. 
Stoddard (Macmillan); A History of the Novel previous to the 
Seventeenth Century, by F. M. Warren (Holt); The English Novel, 
by S. Lanier (Scribner) ; An Introduction to the Study of English 
Fiction, by W. E. Simonds (Heath) ; British Novelists and their 
Styles, by D. Masson (Small, 1889); The English Novel in 
the Time of Shakespeare, by J. J. Jusserand (Unwin) ; History of 
Prose Fiction, revised and edited by IL Wilson, by J. C. Dunlop 
(Bohn’s Standard Library). 

Daniel Defoe. Texts. — Novels, ed. Aitken (Dent); Early Writings 

X 


408 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


in Carisbrooke Library (Routledge); Poems and Pamphlets, in 
Arber’s English Garner, Vol. VIII. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by W. Minto (English Men of 
Letters); Life, by W. Whitten, Westminster Biographies (Small 
Maynard). Essay, by L. Stephen, Hours in a Library. 

Samuel Richardson. — Works (Lippineott)."! Life, by C. L. Thomson 
(Marshall). Essays, by L Stephen, Hours in a Library; by H 
D. Traill, The New Fiction and Other Essays; by A. Dobson, 
Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Henry Fielding. — Works, "*ed. G. E. Saintsbury (Dent); Voyage to 
Lisbon, in Cassell’s National Library. Life, by A. Dobson (Eng- 
lish Men of Letters). Essays, by W. M. Thackeray, in English 
Humorists; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by A. Dobson, 
in Eighteenth Century Vignettes (Fielding’s Voyage to Lisbon and 
Fielding’s Library) ; by J. R. Lowell, in Democracy and Other 
Addresses ; by G. B. Smith, in Poets and Novelists. 

Tobias George Smollett. — Works, ed. Henley (Scribner). Life, by D. 
Hannah (Great Writers) ; Life, by O. Smeaton, Famous Scots 
Series (Scribner) ; Thackeray’s English Humorists, 44 Hogarth, 
Smollett and Fielding.” 

Laurence Sterne. — Works, ed. G. E. Saintsbury (Dent); Tristram 
Shandy, in Morley’s Universal Library and in the Temple Classics. 
Life, by H. D. Traill (English Men of Letters); Life, by P. Fitz- 
gerald, 2 vols. (Chapman and Hall). Essays, by W. M. Thacke- 
ray, in English Humorists; by W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies 
(“ Sterne and Thackeray ”). 

Henry Mackenzie. — The Man of Feeling (Dent, 1893), also in Cas- 
sell’s National Library ; Miscellaneous Works (Man of Feeling 
and Various Essays) (Harper). See Mrs. Oliphant’s Literary 
History of England, Vol. I. 

Frances Burney, Madame d’Arblay. — Diary and Letters, ed. S. C 
Woolsey ; Fanny Burney and her Friends (selections from her 
diary, etc.), ed. L. B. Seeley (London, 1890). Essay by T. B. 
Macaulay. 

Horace Walpole.— The Castle of Otranto, in Cassell’s National Li- 
brary; Letters, selected and edited by C. D. Yonge (Nimmo). 
See H. A. Beers’s English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, 
and E. Gosse’s Life of Gray. Essay, in L. Stephen’s Hours in a 
Library. 

William Beckford.— Vatliek, in Cassell’s National Library. 

Matthew Gregory Lewis.— The Bravo of Venice, in Cassell’s Na- 
tional Library ; Tales of Terror and Wonder, in Morley’s Universal 
Library ; Selections in Saintsbury’s Tales of Mystery, Vol. I. 
(London, 1891). 


READING GUIDE 


409 


Mrs. Radcliffe. — See Saintsbury’s Tales of Mystery, Vol. I.* 

William Godwin.— Caleb Williams (Routledge, 1853). Essays, by 
De Quincey, in Essays on the Poets and other Writers ; by L. 
Stephen, Hours in a Library (“Godwin and Shelley”); by W. 
Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age. Wm. Godwin: his Friends 
and Contemporaries, 2 vols. (Roberts). 

Maria Edgeworth. — Novels (Dent, 1893); Castle Rackrent and The 
Absentee, in Morley’s Universal Library. Life and Letters, by 
A. J. C. Hare, 2 vols. (Arnold); Maria Edgeworth, by Helen 
Zimmerman (Roberts). Essay, in Mrs. Ritchie’s A Book of Sibyls 
(Smith Elder). 

Jane Aesten. — Works,' ed. R. B. Johnson (Dent); Letters, selected 
and edited by S. C. Woolsey (Roberts). Life, by Goldwin Smith 
(Scott); Life, by O. F. Adams (Lee and Shepard); Jane Austen, 
by W. P. Pollock (Longmans); Jane Austen’s Novels, by G. Pel- 
lew (Boston, 1883); Essays on the Novel, as illustrated by Scott 
and Miss Austen, by A. A. Jack (Macmillan). Essay, in Mrs. 
Ritchie’s A Book of Sibyls. 

Sir Walter Scott. — Life, by R. H. Hutton (English Men of Let- 
ters); Life, by C. D. Yonge (Great Writers); Life, by W. H. 
Hudson (London, 1901); Life, by G. E. Saintsbury (Scribner); 
Life, by J. G. Lockhart, 7 vols. (Black). L. Maigron : Le Roman 
Historique a l’Epoque Romantique; Essai sur l’influence de 
Walter Scott (Paris, 1898). Essays, by A. C. Swinburne, in 
Studies in Prose and Poetry, “ The Journal of Sir Walter Scott”; 
by W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies; “The Waverley Novels”; 
by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by J. C. Shairp, in Aspects 
of Poetry ; by T. Carlyle, in his Essays ; by G. E. Saintsbury, in 
Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860, 2d series, “ Scott 
and Dumas ”; by W. Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age. 

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. — Novels and Tales (Long- 
mans) Lord Beaconsfield ; A Study, by George Brandes ; The . 
Earl of Beaconsfield, by H. E. Gorst, Victorian Era Series 
(Blackie). Essays, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; F. 
Harrison, in Early Victorian Literature. 

Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. — Novels, Knebsworth ed. (Rout- 
ledge); Dramatic Works (Routledge). Essay, by W. W. Senior, 
Essays in Fiction (Longmans). 

Charles Dickens — Life, by J. Forster, 2 vols. (Chapman and Hall); 
Life, by F. T. Marzials (Great Writers) ; Life, by A. W. Ward 
(English Men of Letters); Charles Dickens, A Critical Study, 
by G. R. Gissing (Dodd, Mead). Essays, by F. Harrison, in Early 
Victorian Literature; by W. Bagehot, in Literary Studies, Vol. 
II. ; by W. S. Lilly, in Four English Humorists of the Nineteenth 


410 


A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


Century; by A. Lang, essay prefixed to Gadsbill edition of 
Dickens (Chapman and Hall). 

Wm. Makepeace Thackeray.— Life, by A. Trollope (English Men of 
Letters); Life, by Merivale and Marzials (Great Writers) ; Life, 
by L. Melville, 2 vols. (Stone). Essays, by F. Harrison, in Stud- 
ies in Early Victorian Literature; by W. C. Brownell, in Vic- 
torian Prose Masters ; by W. S. Lilly, in Four English Humorists 
of the Nineteenth Century; by G. B. Smith, in Poets and Nove- 
lists. 

Anthony Trollope. — Autobiography, ed. H. M. Trollope (Harper). 
Essays, by H. James, in Partial Portraits; by F. Harrison, in 
Early Victorian Literature. 

Charles Reade. — Charles Reade : a memoir compiled chiefly from 
his literary remains, by C. L. and C. Reade (Chapman Hall, 
1887). Essay, in Swinburne’s Miscellanies. 

Charlotte and Emily Bronte. — Works of Charlotte, Emily, and 
Anne Bronte (Dent, 1893) .; Haworth edition, ed. Mrs. H. Ward 
(Scribner). Life of Charlotte Bronte, by A. Birrell (Great 
Writers); Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Mrs. Gaskell (Appleton); 
Life of Emily Bronte, by A. M. F. Robinson (Roberts). A Note 
on Charlotte Bronte, by A. C. Swinburne (Chatto and Windus) ; 
Essays : Charlotte Bronte, by L. E. Gates, in Studies and Appre- 
ciations ; The Bronte Sisters, in Views on Vexed Questions, W. 
W. Kinsley ; Emily Bronte, in Swinburne’s Miscellanies ; Char- 
lotte Bronte, in F. Harrison’s Early Victorian Literature; “ The 
Brontes,” in G. B. Smith, Poets and Novelists ; C. Bronte, in E. 
Montegus’s Ecrivains Modernes de l’Angleterre (Hachette). 

Charles Kingsley.— Life, by M. Kaufmann (Methuen); Charles 
Kingsley : his letters, and memories of his life, by his wife (Mac- 
millan, 1890). Essays, by F. Harrison, in Early Victorian Liter- 
ature ; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library. See also passage 
on Kingsley in the essay “ Victorian Literature,” in E. Dowden’s 
Transcripts and Studies. 

Mrs. Gaskell. — E, Mont^gus’s Ecrivains Modernes de l’Angleterre 
(Hachette). See also Saintsbury’s Nineteenth Century Literature, 
and the Dictionary of National Biography. Critical paper on Mrs. 
Gaskell’ s writings by Prof. W. Minto, in Fortnightly Review, 
Vol. XXIV., July-September, 1878. 

George Eliot.— Life, by L. Stephen (English Men of Letters, in 
preparation) ; Life, by 0. Browning (Great Writers) ; Life, 3 vols., 
by Cross; George Eliot: A Critical Study of Her Life and Writ- 
ings, by G. W. Cooke (Osgood). Essays, by R. H. Hutton, in 
Modern Guides of English Thought, and in Essays Theological 
and Literary ; by F. Harrison, in Studies in Early Victorian Lit- 


READING GUIDE 


411 


erature; by H. James, in Partial Portraits; by W. C. Brownell, 
in Victorian Prose Masters; by J. Jacobs, in Literary Studies; by 
W. S. Lilly, in Four English Humorists of the Nineteenth Century ; 
by A. Vincens, Portraits de Femmes (Paris, 1887) ; by F. Brune- 
tiere, Le Roman Naturaliste (Paris, 1883). 

George Meredith. — Novels (Scribner) ; Poems, selected (Scribner); 
Essay on Comedy. George Meredith ; some characteristics, R. Le 
Gallienne (Lane); George Meredith; A study; Hannah Lynch 
(Methuen). Essay, by W. C. Brownell, in Victorian Prose 
Masters; by A. Monkhouse, in Books and Plays. 

Thomas Hardy. — Works (Harper) The Art of Thomas Hardy, by 
L. Johnson (Lane) ; Thomas Hardy, by Annie Macdonnell (Hodder 
and Stoughton, 1894). Essay, by T. G. Selby, in The Theology 
of Modern Fiction. 

Robert Louis Stevenson. — Works (Scribner). Letters, ed. S. Col- 
vin (Scribner) ; Life, by G. Balfour (Scribner) ; Life, by Margaret 
N. Black (Scribner) ; Robert Louis Stevenson, a Study, by A [lice] 
B[rown] (Copeland and Day). Essay, by H. Jame3, in Partial 
Portraits ; by J. J. Chapman, in Emerson and Other Essays ; by 
A. Monkhouse, in Books and Plays, “ Plays of Stevenson and 
Henley.” 
















INDEX 


Abbotsford, 358 
“ Abou Ben Adhem,” 293 
Abraham, in miracle plays, 91 
“ Absalom and Achitophel,” 179 
Absentee, The , 354 
Absolute, Captain, 221 
Abstractions, in 18th century verse, 
291 

“ Abt Vogler,” 329 

Accent, in English verse, 32-33, 55, 66 

Acres, Bob, 221 

Actors and acting, 293 

Actresses, on Restoration stage, 99 

Adam, in miracle plays, 90, 93, 163 ; 

in Paradise Lost, 164 
Adam the Scrivener, in Canterbury 
Tales, 47 

Adam Bede , 376-377 
Adams, Parson, in Joseph Andrews , 
239 

Addison, Joseph, 190, 209, 214, 219, 
245, 258, 301, 354, 371 ; his charac- 
ter, 199 ; his mission, 200 ; his 
method and style, 201 
“ Address to the Deil” (Burns), 267 
“ Address to the Irish People,” 288 
“ Adonais,” 261, 289, 291 
Advancement of Learning, The, 141 
Adventurer, The, 214 
Adventures of Arthur at the Tarn 
Watheling, The , 26 
“ Advice from the Scandalous Club,” 
198 

^Egean, The, 285 
Aelfric, 19 
“ A alia ” 9R9 

^Eneid, The (Surrey), 67 
Aeschere, in Beowulf 7 
^Eschylus, 289, 317 
vEsop, 306 

Aethelings (lords) 3, 14 
Africa, 61 

Agincourt, 42, 84, 112 
Aguecheek, Sir Andrew, 114 
“ Alastor,” 289 
Albania, 285 
Albion's England , 85 
Alcestis, 40 

Alchemist, The, 125, 126 


Alcibiades, 307 
Aldwinkle, 178 
Alexander the Great, 24, 26 
“ Alexander’s Feast,” 180, 183, 259 
Alexandria, 42, 375 
Alexandrines, 81, 84 
Alfoxden, 271, 274 
Alfred, King, 18-19, 22 
Algrind, in Shepherd's Calendar 
78 

“ Alisoun,” 33 
Allegory, 80, 171 
All for Love, 187 
All-hallows’ day, 27 
Alliteration, 32-33, 55, 70 
Allworthy, Mr., 239 
Alps, The, 11, 38, 48, 258, 285 
Alton Locke, 375 
Amadas, 30 

Amelia, 239, 240-241, 242 
America, 148, 172, 225, 226, 228, 314, 
376 

Amis and Amiloun, 26 
“ Amoretti,” 77 
Analysis, in the novel, 378 
Anatomy of Melancholy, The, 148 
“ Ancient Mariner, The,” 271, 272- 
273 

Andreas, 14 

“ Andrea del Sarto,” 329 
Angles, The, 1, 5, 11, 18 
Anglo-Saxon, 17, 19, 20, 22, 65 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The, 19 
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, The, 11 
Anglo-Saxon poetry, 4, 9, 20 
Anglo-Saxons, The, 1, 3, 10 
Anne of Bohemia, 37 
Anne, Queen of England, 190, 191, 
208, 232, 258, 301, 371 
Annus Mirabilis, 179 
Anti-climax, Byron’s use of, 287 
Antithesis, in Lyly, 70 ; in Sidney, 
73 

Antiquary, The, 357, 359 
Antony and Cleopatra, 115, 187 
Apollo, 161, 297 
Apollyon, 172 

Apologia pro vita Sua. Newman’s, 
341, 342 


413 


414 


INDEX 


“ Appeal from the New to the Old 
Whigs,” 226 
“ Appleton House,” 152 
Arbuthnot, 205, 209 
Arbuthnot, Epistle to, 209 
Arcades, 160 

A rp n m i o 

Arcadia, Sidney’s, 71, 72, 73, 74, 
75 

Archery, in Toxophilus, 63 
Arcite, 45 
Arden, Mary, 106 
Areopagitica, 163 
Areopagus, The, 73 
Ariel, 122 

Ariosto, 81, 162, 293, 294 
Armour, Jean, 269 
Arno, the, 305 

Arnold, Matthew, 200, 291, 340; 
contrasted with Browning, 332 ; 
a poet of transition, 333 ; his ideal 
of form, 334 ; his prose, 334 ; his 
“ gospel of ideas,” 335 ; his criti- 
cism, 336 ; his post- romantic point 
of view, 336 ; his dictatorship, 337 ; 
compared with Newman, 342 
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 332 
Arqua, 28 
Artegal, 80 

Arthour and Merlin, 26 
Arthur, King, 11, 26, 27, 28 (in 
Morte I)' Arthur), 59, 162. 320, 322, 
323 

Arthur, in King John, 111 
Arthur, in The Faerie Qneene, 80 
Arthurian Legends, The, 24, 25, 58, 
162, 321 

Artificiality in Elizabethan litera- 
ture, 20, 75, 79, 86, 98, 109, 115, 
134, 184 
Arviragus, 121 
Ascension, the, 14 
Ascham, Roger, 63, 64, 71 
Asia, 290, 303 
Asia Minor, 307, 347 
Asolo, 326 
Asser (bishop), 19 
Astrcea Redux, 178 
Astrophel and Stella , 71 
As You Like It , 75, 92. 113 
Ataianta in Calydon, 305, 350 
Athens, 61, 69, 110, 307 
Atlantis, 347 
Atterbury, 371 
Atticus, 209, 219 
Auburn, 220 
Audrey, 114 

Augustan age, The, 253, 254, 255, 282, 
283 

Augustine, 12 
Aurengzebe, 187 


Aurora Leigh, 331 
Austen, Jane, 250, 377; her life, 
355 ; limitations, 356 ; her - excel- 
lences, 356 ; her realism, 357 
Austen, Lady, 264 
Austin, the fair, 25 
Austria, 331 

Authorized Version of the Bible, 167 

“ Autumn,” 254 

Avalon, 26, 237 

Avery, Captain, 233 

Avon, the, 108 

“ Awake my Lute,” 66 

Ayrshire, 267, 269 

Bacon, Francis, 123, 146, 175, 312; 
his life and character, 140 ; his 
system, 141 ; his essays, 142; his 
style, 143 

Baeda, 12 (see Bede), 18, 19 
“ Balaustion’s Adventure,” 329 
“ Ballad of Agincourt,” 84 
“ Ballade of Charitie,” 262 
Balle, John, 50 
Balmawhapple, Laird, 359 
Balzac, 372 
Bankside, 96, 132 
Banquo, 118 

Barabbas, in Jew of Malta, 103 

Barchcster Towers, 372 

“Bard, The,” 259 

Bardell, Widow, in Pickwick, 365 

Bardolph, 126 

Barons' Wars, 84 

Barry Lyndon, 368 

Bartholomew Fair, 125 

Bastille, 317 

Bath, 355 

“ Battle of the Baltic,” 283 
Battle of the Books, 191 
Battle of Brunanburh, 19 
Battle of Maid on, 20, 34 
Bayona, 106 
“ Beata Beatrix,” 345 
Beatrice, 113, 114, 306 
Beauchamp, Richard, Earl of War- 
wick, 59 

Beauchamp's Career , 379 
Beaufort, Jane, 57 
Beaumont, Francis, 128, 132-134 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 132-134 
Beckford, Wm., 251 
Bede (The Venerable Bede), 12, 
19, 25 

Bedfordshire, 170, 172 
Beggars' Opera, 211 
Behn, Wm., 248 
Belch, Sir Toby, 114 
Beige, in Fairie Queen, 80 
Belphcebe, 80 
Belshazzar, 32 


INDEX 


415 


Bemerton, 154 
“ Ben,” 132. (See Jonson.) 
Benedict, 114 
Bennet, Mr. , 355 
Bennet, Mary, 356 
Bennet, Lydia, 356 
Bentley, 191, 209 
Beowulf, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 
Beowulf, the poem, 5, 9 
Beowulf’s Mount, 9 
Bei-keley, 191 
Beulah, 172 
Beverley, 221 
Bevis of Hampton, 26 
Bible, The, 50, 65, 84, 169, 170, 336, 
339 

Bible Stories, 32, 91, 277 
Bickerstaff, Isaac, 193, 194 
Biographia Literaria , 298 
“ Black-eyed Susan, ’’ 211 
Blackfriars Theatre, 99, 108 
Blackwood’s Magazine, 376 
Blake, William, 265, 266, 280, 281, 
298, 366 

Blank verse, 67, 101, 166, 255 
Bleak House , 366 
Blenheim, 199 

“ Blessed Damosel, The,” 343, 345 
Blifil, in Tom Jones , 240 
Blot in the Scutcheon , The, 325 
“ Blue Closet, The,” 347 
Blue Coat School, 271 
Boccaccio, 38, 39, 41, 42, 56 
Boethius, 19 
Boleyne, Anne, 66, 306 
Bolingbroke, 191, 192, 207, 209, 210, 
225 

Book of the Buchesse, The, 36, 47 
Booth ,Capt., in Amelia, 240, 242 
Border Minstrelsy, 282 
Borough, The, 263 
Boswell, James, 216-217 
Bottom, 110 
Bourgogne, Jean de, 59 
Bower of Bliss, in Faerie Queene, 
82 

Bowling, in Roderick Random, 243 
Boy actors, in Elizabethan theatres, 
99 

Bradwardine, Baron, 359 
Brama, 303 
Bramble, Matt, 243 
Bramble, Tabitha, 243 
Brantwood, 339 
Brasenose College, 148 
Bravo of Venice, The, 251 
Bread Street, 158 
“ Break, break, break,” 319 
Breck, Alan, 383 
Bristol, 261 

“Bristowe Tragedy,” The, 262 


Britannia's Pastorals, 150 
British Constitution, 252 
Britomarte, 80 

Broad Church movement, The, 375 
Brobdingnag, 195 
Bronte, Charlotte, 373-375, 384 
Bronte, Emily, 373-374 
Brooke, Lord, 85 

“ Brougham Castle, Song at the Feast 
of ”274 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 146-148, 153 
183, 299, 301 

Browne, William, 149, 150, 161 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
325, 330-332, 343 

Browning, Robert, 297, 333, 350, 
351, 380 ; contrasted with Tenny- 
son, 323 ; life and career, 324 ; his 
marriage, 325 ; his interest in soul- 
history, 326 ; his dramatic faculty, 
327 ; his method, 328 ; his wide 
sympathy, 329 ; his teaching, 330 
Brussels, 374 
Brutus, 25 

Buckingham, Duke of, 187 
Bufo, 219 

Bulwer Lytton, Edward, 362- 
363, 383, 384 
Bulwer’s “ Gothic,” 367 
Bumble in Oliver Twist, 366 
Bunhill Fields, 168 
Bunyan, John, 152, 169-173, 181, 
185, 232 

Burbage, James, 99, 107 
Burbon in Faerie Queene, 80 
Burger, 282, 283 

Burke, Edmund, 224 ; views on 
America and India, 222, 226 ; on 
French Revolution, 226-227 ; po- 
litical thought, 227 ; romanticism, 
228, 252, 262, 263, 275 
Burleigh, Lord, 140 
Burley, in Old Mortality, 360, 361 
Burney, Fanny, 221, 248, 249 
Burns, Gilbert, 268 
Burns, Robert, 275, 280, 281, 314, 
322 ; his self-confidence, 225 ; his 
poetry, 266-268; his romanticism, 
269 

Burton, Richard, 148, 183, 301 
Bury St. Edmunds, 56 
Butler, Samuel, 184, 185 
Butter's Weekly Newes from Italy 
and Germanie, 197 
Button’s, 180 

Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 
275, 283, 293, 304, 315, 326, 351, 
357, 397; his personality, 28 ; 
travels and eastern tales, 285-286 ; 
his popularity, 286 ; his satire, 287; 
his force, 287 


416 


INDEX 


Byron, Miss Harriet, in Sir Charles 
Grandison, 237, 238 
Byronic type, the, 251 
Byronism, 286, 362 
“ By the Fireside,” 330 
Cjedmon, 12-14, 36, 18 
Caesar, 4 
Caesura, 55 
Cain , 285, 286 
Calcutta, 368 
Caleb Williams, 252, 288 
“ Caliban upon Setebos,” 329 
Calidore, Sir, in Faerie Queene, 80 
Calote, daughter of Langland, 52 
Cambel, 80 
Camberwell, 324, 326 
Cambridge, 78, 100, 124, 155, 158, 178, 
185, 244, 257, 273, 318, 375 
Camelot, 27 
“ Campaign, The,” 199 
Campbell, Thomas, 283, 292 
Campion, Thomas, 85 
Candlemas Eve, 151 
Canon’s Yeomen, in Canterbury 
Tales, 45 

Canterbury, 44, 57, 100 
Canterbury Tales, 37, 47 ; plan, 41 ; 
pilgrims at the Tabard, 42; the 
characters, 43, 48, 51, 347 
Canticles, Rolle’s, 29 
Canynge, William, 262 
Captain Singleton , 234 
Capulet, 111 
Caracalla, Baths of, 289 
Carew, 148 

Caricature, Dickens’s, 365 
Carlyle, Thomas, 54, 333, 335, 336, 
337, 340, 375 ; life and writings, 
313-314; spirit of his work, 315; 
Sartor Resartus, its meaning, 316 ; 
its style, 317; his art, 317-318; 
his service to his age, 318 
“ Carlylese,” 317 
Carton, Sidney, 367 
Casa Guidi Windoios, 325, 331, 332 
“ Castaway, The,” 265 
Castle of Indolence , The , 255 
Castle of Otranto, 250, 252, 260 
Castle Rackrent, 354 
Castlewood, 371 
Castlewood, Lady, 371 
Cataline, 125 
Catherine, 368 
Catherine de Medici, 83 
Catholicism, 154 
Catholic Revival, the, 375 
Catholics, 204 
Cato, 199 

Cavaliers, the, 168, 200 
Cavalier song-writers, 129, 140 
Caxton, 59, 62 


Caxtons, The, 363 

Cecilia, 248, 249 

Celestial City, 173 

Celtic influence, 16, 17, 24, 292, 322 

Celts, the, 1, 10, 11 

Cenci, The, 289, 351 

Censorship, the, 163 

Cervantes, 246 

Cesar, 30 

Changeling, The, 131 
Chantry for souls, 52 
Chapman, George, 83-84, 294 
Chapman’s Homer, 84, 294 
“ Charge of the Light Brigade, The,’ 
84, 320 

Charlemagne, 24, 26 
Charles Edward, 371 
Charles I., 133, 141, 144, 148, 150, 155, 
156, 162, 163, 170, 184 
Charles II. , 137, 138, 163, 174, 175, 178, 
182, 184, 189 
Charles the Bald, 1 8, 361 
Charlotte, Queen, 248 
Chartism, 314, 351, 375 
Chatterton, Thomas, 261-262, 282 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 11, 23, 28, 32, 
33, 34, 35, 89, 153, 177, 180, 200, 
207, 293, 296, 347, 348 ; his life, 35 ; 
at court, 35 ; influenced by the 
Roman de la Rose, 36 ; on the Con- 
tinent, 36 ; duties as controller, 37 ; 
middle life and Italian period, 37 ; 
English period and Italian influ- 
ence, 38 ; Legend of Goode Wom- 
men, 39; influenced by new na- 
tional life, 41 ; Canterbury Tales, 
42 et seq. ; his art, 47 ; his material, 
48 ; contrasted with Gower, 48 ; 
with Langland, 51, 55-56; his in- 
fluence, 56-58, 59, 65 ; his portrait, 
58 

Cheapside, 150 
Chelsea, 314 
Chesterfield, Lord, 203 
Cheyne Row, 314 
Child actors, 98-99 
Childe Harold, 285, 286 
“Childe Roland,” 329 
Children in English fiction, 366 
Children of Paul’s, 98 
Children of the Chapel Royal, 98 
Chivalry, 24 
Choruses, 96, 168 
Choruses in Henry V., 69, 96, 112 
Christ, 16, 30, 53, 92, 104 
“ Christabel,” 271, 272 
Christian Hero, The, 202 
Christian Year, The , 341 
Christianity, 9, 16, 146, 153, 161, 210, 
375 

“Christina,” 330 


INDEX 


417 


Christmas, 89 
“ Christmas Eve,” 329 
Christmas mummings, 93 
Christ’s Hospital, 271 
Christ's Victory and Triumph in 
Earth and in Heaven , 153 
Church, the, of England, 43, 60, 61, 
76, 139, 154, 155, 179, 181, 182, 244, 
318, 340, 341 

Church, the, of Rome, 9, 50, 51, 52, 
88, 162, 167, 171, 179, 181, 182, 341 
Citizen of the World , The, 218, 219 
Civil War, the, 124, 129, 130, 139, 
146, 155, 170 
Clarence, Duchess of, 35 
Clarendon, Lord, 147 
Clarissa Harlowe, 236, 237, 238, 240, 
242, 248 

Classical traditions, the, 262 
Classicism, 97, 125, 157, 175, 176, 214, 
215, 253, 334, 335 
Classics, the, 60, 61, 93, 158 
Claude, 251 
Cleanness, 32 
Cleopatra, 116 
Clere, 66 

Clerk of Oxford, the, in Canterbury- 
Tales, 44, 45, 46 
Clifford, 368 
Clive, 311 

Cloister and the Hearth, The , 373 
Closed couplet, the, 178 
Clothes-philosophy, Carlyle’s, 316 
Clowns, 92, 109, 114 
Cockermouth, 273 
Ccelum Brittanicum, 149 
Coffee houses, 128, 180 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 253, 
266, 281, 282, 284, 299, 307, 310, 322, 
351, 358 ; “ in the new poetry,” 
270 ; early life, 271 ; German in- 
fluence, 272 ; poetic characteris- 
tics, 272-273 ; his criticism, 298 
Colesbury, Mortimer, 52 
Colet, John, 62 

Colin Clout's Come Home Again, 77 
Collier, Jeremy, 189, 190, 222 
Collins, Mr., 356 

Collins, William, 253, 255-257, 
275, 298 

Colombe's Birthday , 325 
Colonel Jack, 234 
Columbus, 61 
Comedy of Errors, 109 
“Come live with me and be my 
Love,” 86 

Commonwealth, 150, 163, 174 
“ Complaint of Chaucer to his Empty 
Purse, The,” 38 

“ Complaint of the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, The,” 68 


Complaints, 77 
Complete Angler, 150 
Comus, 104, 160, 161, 166 
Conceits, 144, 153 
Concentration in America, 225 
“ Conduct of the Allies, The,” 191 
Confessio Amantis, 49 
“ Confession, The,” 345 
Confessions of an English Opium- 
Eater, 302, 303, 304 
Congreve, William, 189 
Conquest of Cranada, 186 
Conrad, 285 

Consolations of Philosophy, 19 
Constable, Henry, 85 
“Coquette’s Heart, The,” 201 
Cordelia, 120 

“ Corinna going a-Maying,” 151, 152 
Coriolanus, 115 
Corneille, 176 
Cornhill, 52 
Corpus Christi, 89 
Corsair , The, 285 
“ Cotter’s Saturday Night,” 267 
Country Churchyard. See Elegy, 
259 

Country Wife, The, 189 
Couplets, 47, 83, 217 
Court, 3, 35, 49, 62, 71, 72, 74, 98, 
109, 149, 154, 179 
Covenanters, 361 
Covent Garden Theatre, 364 
Coventry, 106, 306 
Coverdale, Miles, 65 
Coverley, de, 200 

Covetousness (in miracle plays), 92 
Cowley, Abraham, 155, 157 
Cowper, William, 264-265, 280, 281 
Crabbe, George, 263, 277. 280, 281 
Craigenputtoch, 314 
Cranford, 376 

Cranmer, Archbishop, 65, 71 
Crashaw, Richard, 153-156, 157 
Crawley, Rawdon, 370 
Crecy, 43 
Crimean War, 320 
Critic, The, 221 

Criticism, English, 74,128,139,181 
183, 190, 200, 215, 298 et seq 336 
Cromwell, 138, 152, 155, 163, 178, 186, 
314 

“ Crossing the Bar,” 321 
“ Cry of the Children, The,” 331 
Crystal Palace Exhibition, 313 
“ Cuckoo Song,” 33 
Culture, 335 

Culture and Anarchy, 335 
Cumberland, 273, 274, 275 
Curse of Kehama, The, 281 
Cursor Mundi, 29 
Cymbeline, 121 


418 


INDEX 


Cynewulf, 14-16, 18, 33 
Cynthia, Queen Elizabeth, in Faerie 
Queene, 86 ; in Lyly's Fndymion, 98 
Cynthia's Revels, 135 

Danes, 5, 17, 18 
Daniel, 13 

Daniel Deronda, 377, 378 
Daniel, Samuel, 84, 85 
Dante, 38, 164, 173, 393, 303 
Dante and his Circle , 345 
D’Arblay, General, 348 
Dark Lady, the, in Shakespeare’s 
Sonnets, 115, 371 
Dartmouth, 35 
Darwin, 330 

Davenant, Sir William, 186 
David, 157, 179, 197, 339 
David and Bethsabe, 1 04 
David Balfour, 383 
David Copperfield, 366 
Davideis, The, 157 
David Simple, 348 
Davies, Sir John, 85 
“ Day before Crecy, The,” 347 
Deans, Jeanie, 360 
Death, in miracle plays, 94 
“ Death in the Desert, A.,” 339 
Death of Blaunche the Dnchesse, 
The, 36 

Death of Byrhtnoth, 30 
De Augmentis Scientiarum, 141 
de Burgh, Lady Catherine, 357 
Decamerone, 43 
De Claris Mulieribus, 39 
Dedlock, Lady, 367 
Defarge, Mme., in A Tale of Two 
Cities, 365, 366 

“ Defence of an Essay of Dramatic 
Poetry,” 183 

Defence of Gnenevere, The, 347 
Defence of Poesie, The, 74, 96 
Defoe, Daniel, 339, 348, 349 ; his 
career, 333 ; his method. 333 ; his 
novels, 334; morality, 335 
Dekker, Thomas, 94, 137, 139-130 
Deism, 310 
Delia, 85 

Demas, in Pilgrim’s Progress, 173 
Demogorgon (in Prometheus Un- 
bound), 390 
Denmark, 1, 5 
Dennis, JonN, 309 
“ Deor’s Lament,” 4, 9 
“ Departed Friends,” 156 
De Quincey, Thomas, his life, 303 ; 
Confessions of an Opium-Eater, 
302-303 ; his style, 303 ; his defects 
as a writer, 304 
Descent of Man , The, 330 
Des Champs, 36 


“ Descent of Odin,” 360 
“ Description of a Religious House,” 
156 

Desdemona, 118 

Deserted Village , The, 318, 219. 330, 
363 

Desperate Remedies, 380 
Devereux, Lady Penelope, 73 
Devil, the, in miracle plays, 90 
Devil, The, tavern, 138 
Devonshire, 150, 371 
Dhu, Evan, 359 
Diana, 85 (Constable) 

Diana of the Crossways, 379 
Dickens, Charles, 331, 369, 373, 
383 ; his use of criminal types, 363 ; 
his striking success, 363 ; his train- 
ing, 364; his “humors,” 365: his 
humanitarianism, 366 ; his plots, 
367 

Dictatorship, Doctor Johnson’s, 218, 
219 

Dideyne (Dido), 30 
Dido, 39 
Diomedes, 39 

1 ‘Dirge in Cymbeline,” 257 
Discourses in America , 336 
Disraeli, Benjamin, 362 
Dissenters, 155, 332, 235, 335 
“ Dissertation on Roast Pig,” 301 
Divine Comedy , The, 172 
Divorce, Milton’s pamphlet on, 163 
Dobbin, in Vanity Fair, 368 
Dr. Faushis, 103-103 
Dombey, Florence, 300 
Dominic, Father, 341 
Don Carlos , 187 
Don Juan , 285, 287 
Donne, John, 144-145, 148, 153, 153, 
154, 155, 157, 159, 307 
Dorsetshire, 168 
Dorothea [Brooke], 378 
“ Dover Beach,’’ 333 
Dragon of the Gold-hoard, in Beo- 
wulf, 8 

Drake, Sir Francis, 71, 104 
Drama, the, 69, 76, 85, 86, 87, 135, 
176-177; origins, 88, 91; classic 
and romantic, 94-96 ; rhetoric in 
Elizabethan age, 102 ; rise of, un- 
der Elizabeth, 97, 98 ; theatres, 
99; Marlowe, 100-103; Peele, 104- 
105; Shakespeare, 106 et seq.; at- 
tempted by Browning, 325; Vic- 
torian, 350-351 

Drama, Elizabethan, Lamb’s revival 
of, 300 

Drama, Greek, 350 
“ Drama of rhetoric, the,” 97 
Drama, Restoration, 186-189, 221 
Dramatic Lyrics, 325 


INDEX 


419 


Dramatic Romances, 825 
Drapier's Letters , The, 192 
Drayton, Michael, 84, 85 
“ Dream Children,” 801 
“ Dream-Fugue,” 803 
Dream of John Dali , The, 849 
“ Drink to me only with thine eyes,” 
127 

Drury Lane Theatre, 202, 221 
Dryden, John, 76, 129, 157, 169 ; early 
life, 178, 185, 203, 210, 214, 216, 
245, 253, 259, 294; satires, 179; 
substance of his poetry, 181, 182 ; 
as a critic, 183 ; his prose, 184 
Dublin, 192, 221, 288 
Dublin, University of, 190, 218 
Duchess of Malfi, The, 134-185 
Duessa, 80 
Dunciad, 205, 210 
Dutch, 1 

Dutch, the, 179, 254 
Dyer, Sir Edward, 73, 86 

Earthly Paradise, The, 347-348, 349 
Easter, 189 
“ Easter Day,” 329 
Easter revels, 19 
Ebb Tide, The, 383 
Ecclesiastical History of the English 
People, 12, 18, 19, 25 
Ecclesiastical Polity, 76 
Ecclefechan, 313 
Eclogues, 72, 78 
Edgbaston, 341 
Edinburgh, 218, 268, 282, 302 
Edinburgh Review, 284, 311 
Edinburgh, University of, 313 
Edgeworth, Maria, 354-355 
Edward’s Massacre, 259 
Edward II. , 84 
Edward II., 103 
Edward III., 35, 41, 50 
Edward VI., 68 
Egoist, The, 379 

Eighteenth Century, the, in England, 
190, 227, 28U 366 

“ Elegy of Mr. Partridge, An ” 193 
“ Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” 
257 

Elena (in the Italian), 251 
Elgin marbles, 295 
Elia, Essays of, 299, 300-301 
Elizabeth, Princess, 121 
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 62, 63, 
68, 69, 71 , 74, 76. 77, 79, 80, 96, 
98, 104. 106, 109, 113, 133, 139, 140, 
184, 361 

Elizabethan age, the, 144, 146, 149, 
158, 172, 175, 181, 187, 292, 310, 
324, 375 

Elizabethan dramatists, 97, 293 


Elizabethan literature, 84, 86-87, 
127, 303 

Elizabethan playhouses, 42 
Elizabethan poetry, 298 
Elizabethan prose, 216 
Elizabethan revival, the, 298, 299 
“ Eloisa to Abelard,” 204 
Elstow, 169 
Ely, 19 

Emerson, 279, 317, 326 
Emilia, in Othello, 118 
Emilie, in “Knight’s Tale,” 57 
Emma, 357 

“ Endymion ” (Keats), 177, 262, 294, 
296 

Endymion (Lyly), 98 
England's Helicon, 85 
Englisc, 22 
English, 1, 22, 23 

English Bards and Scotch Review- 
ers, 284 

English literature, 1, 19, note 
English Mail Coach, The, 303 
English Prayer Book, The, 65 
Eostre, 2 

“ Epilogue to the Satires,” 205, 209 
“ Epithalamion,” Spenser’s, 77 
“ Epistle of Karshish,” 328 
Epistle to Arbuthnot, 205, 219 
“ Epistle to Davie,” 267 
Epping Forest, 346 
Erasmus, 62, 373 
Ernley, 125 
Erse, 261 

Essay on Criticism, 204, 206 
“Essay on Dramatic Poetry, An,” 
183 

Essay on Man, 205, 210 
“ Essay on Satire,” 183 
Essay writing, 301 
Essays, Bacon’s, 142, 143 
Essays, Dr. Johnson’s, 214, 215, 216 
Essays, Macaulay’s, 311 
Essays in Criticism, 336 
Essays of Elia , 300, 301, 302 
Essex, Earl of, 69, 80, 86 
Etherege, Sir George, 188 
Eton, 94, 238, 258, 288 
Euphues, 187 

Euphues and his England, 70, 74, 
98, 109 

Euphues' Golden Legacy, 75 
Euphues , or the Anatomy of Wit, 70 
Euphuism, 143 
Euphuistic romances, 75 
Evans, Mary Ann. See George 
Eliot 

Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems , 
294, 296, 297 
Evelina, 248, 249 
Evelyn, 177 




420 


INDEX 


“ Evelyn Hope,” 330 
Every Man in his Humour , 124, 125, 
126, 127 
Evolution, 320 
Examiner , The , 197 
Excursion, The, 274 
Exeter Book, The, 15, 17 
“ Exile of Erin, The,” 283 
“ Expostulation and Reply,” 274 
Eyre, Simon, 129 

Fables (Dryden), 180, 183 
Fables (Gay), 211 

Faerie Queen, The, 28, 69, 77, 78 ; 

analysis, 79, 81, 84, 86, 153, 172 
Fagin, in Oliver Twist, 365 
Fairfax, Lord, 152 
Fair Quarrel, A, 131 
Faithful Shepherdess , The, 132 
Falkland in Caleb Williams, 252 
Fall of Princes, The, 68 
Falstaff, 112, 113, 128 
Far from the Madding Crowd, 380 
“ Farewell to the Famous and Fort- 
unate Generals of our English 
Forces, A,” 104 
Farquhar, George, 189 
“ Fatal Sisters, The,” 260 
Faust, 317 
Faustus, 192 
Feast of Pikes, The. 31 7 
Ferdinand, Count Fathom, 242 
Fermor, Miss, in Rape of the Lock , 
208 

Ferrabosco, 125 
Ferrar, Nicholas, 154, 155 
Feste, in Twelfth Night, 114 
Fielding, Henry, 221, 248, 360, 
371 ; life, 238 ; works, 239-240 ; 
qualities as a novelist, 241 
Fielding, Sarah. 248 
Fiesole, 38, 42, 305 
“ Fight at Finnsbury, The,” 9 
Fingal, 260 
Finsbury Fields, 99 
First Folio, The, of Shakespeare, 122 
“ Flaming Heart, The,” 155 
Flanders, 124 
Flaubert, 383 
Fletcher, Giles, 153 
Fletcher, John, 104, 132-134, 159, 
161 

“ Flee fro the Press,” 47 
Florence, 38, 42, 305, 306, 325 
Floris and Blanchejlour, 26 
Florizel, in Winter's Tale, 121 
Flourdelis, 80 
Ford, John, 136, 187 
Forest of Arden, The, 75 
“ Forget not yet,” 66 
Fors Clavigera, 339 


Fortune (theatre), 99 
Fortunes of Nigel, The, 357 
Four P's, The, 93 
“ Fra Lippo Lippi,” 329 
Framley Parsonage, 372 
France, 10, 11, 25, 35, 41, 42, 59, 65, 
78, 80, 146, 155, 172, 176-177, 226, 
270, 288, 337 

“ Francesca da Rimini," 293 
Frea, 2 

Frederick, Prince, 121 
Freeport, Sir Andrew, 200 
French, The, 21, 112 
French form, 356 

French (language), 22, 23, 24, 33, 57 
French philosophers, 288 
French Revolution, The, 226-227,270, 
271 , 272, 273, 283, 286, 290, 314, 317- 
318, 366 

“ French Revolution,” reflections on 
the, 226 

Fressingfield, 104 

Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 103 
Friar Tuck, 93 
Friday, 2 

Friendship's Garland, 336 
Froissart, 35 
Fulham, 132 
Fuller, 128 

Further Adventures of Robinson 
Crusoe , 234 

Gaelic, 260 
Galileo, 162 

Gammer Gurton's Needle, 94 
Gamp, Sairy, in Martin Chuzzlewit, 
365 

“ Garden, The,” Marvell’s, 152 
Garth, Caleb, in Middlemarch , 377 
Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth, 376 
“ Gather ye Rosebuds while ye May,” 
151 

Gaul, 10, 11 
Gaul, in Fingal, 261 
Gawayne, 27 ; see Sir Gawayne and 
the Green Knight, 26 
Gay, John, 205, 209, 211 
Gebir, 304, 305 
Gellatley, David, 359 
Geneva, 340 
“ Genevieve,” 271 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 24, 59, 119 
George II. , 242 
George III. , 225 
George IV. , 312 

George Eliot, 331 , 383, 384 ; her 
life, 376 ; as a realist, 377 
“ Germ, The,” 343 
German Ocean, 1 
German philosophy, 284 
German reformers, 64 


INDEX 


421 


Germanic strain in English, 52 

Germanic tribes, 1 1 

Germany, 61, 71 , 197, 270, 272, 274, 283 

Giant Despair, 172 

Giaour, The, 285 

Gibbon, Edward, 222-223 

Gifford, Mr., 171 

“ Gilliflower of Gold, The,” 347 

Giorgione, 296 

“ Give me more love or more dis- 
dain,” 148 
Gladstone, 311 

Gleeman, the (gleoman), 3, 6, 13, 14 
Gleggs, The, 377 

Globe, The (theatre), 99, 107, 108 
Gloriana, in Faerie Queene, 80 
Gluttony (in Miracle Plays), 92 
Godiva, 306 
Godwin, Mary, 289 
Godwin, William, 250, 252, 288 
Goethe, 317 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 218 ; his char- 
acter, 219 ; his plays, 220-221, 247, 
248, 262 

Goneril, in King Lear, 120 
Gongora, 144 

Good Natured Man, The , 218, 219 
Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, 68, 
96, 101, 125 
Gorhambury, 141 
Gosson, Stephen, 73-74 
Gothic, 5, 6 

‘ Gothic,” 260, 282, 367, 368 
G'othic romance, 250, 251, 252 
Gothland, the home of Beowulf, 5 
Governail of Princes , 57 
Gower, John, 36, 48, 49-50, 58 
Grace Abounding to the Chief of 
Sinners , 152, 170, 185, 232 
“ Grammarian’s Funeral, The,” 319 
Grande Chartreuse, 258 
Grantorto, in Fcerie Queen , 80 
Grasmere, 274, 302 
Gray, Thomas, 212, 250, 253, 255, 
257, 260, 308 
Gray’s Inn, 130 

Great Duke of Florence , The, 136 
Greece, 207, 285, 334, 347 
Greek, 23, 61, 62, 157, 158, 170, 305, 
307 

Greek dramatists, 293 
Greek tragedy, 111 
Greene, Robert, 74, 75, 100, 103- 
104, 107-108 

Greene's Repentance , 75 

Gregory, 19 
Grendel, 5, 6, 7-8 
Grey de Wilton, Lord, 77, 79, 80 
Grimbald (King Alfred’s mass- 
priest), 19 

Griiidal, Archbishop, 78 


Gringolet, 27 

Groat's Worth of Wit, A, 75 

Grocyn, William, 62 

Grub Street, 218 

Guinevere, 28, 322, 323 

Gulliver's Travels , 192, 193, 194-196 

Guy Mannering, 357, 360 

Guy of Warwick, 26 

Guyon, Sir, in Fairie Queene, 80 

Gwendolen, in Daniel Deronda , 378 

Hales, Thomas de, 30 
Hallam, Arthur, 319 
“Hamadryad,” 305 
Hamlet , 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 
177 

Hampole, Hermit of, 29 
Hampshire Grenadiers, 223 
Hampton, 208 
Hampton Court Palace, 63 
Hannibal, 306 
Hardcastle, Mr., 220 
Hardy, Thomas, 93, 380-382, 384 
Harold, 362 

Harris, Mrs., in Martin Chuzzlewit, 
365 

Harvey, Gabriel, 78 
Hastings, 20, 21 
Hastings, Warren, 225, 311 
Hathaway, Ann, 107 
Hawkshead, 273, 279 
“Haystack in the Floods, The,” 
347 

Hazlitt, 146 
Heap, Uriah, 365 

Heart of Mid-Lothian, The, 357, 359, 
360 

Heartfree family in Jonathan Wilde , 
240 

Hebraic element, the, 335, 337 
Hebrew, 170 
Hebrides, 165 
Hell-Mouth, 90 
Henry IV., of France, 80, 176 
Henry IV., of England, 37, 53 
Henry V., 57 
Henry VI., 262 
Henry VII., 60, 62 
Henry VIII., 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 
306 

Henry TV., 94, 112, 126. 127 
Henry V., 69, 97, 112, 126 
Henry VL, 108, 109 
Henry Esmond , 370-372 
Heorrenda, 4 
Heorot, 5, 6, 7 

Herbert, George, 144, 153-154, 341 
Herbert, William, Earl of Pem- 
broke, 108 

Hero and Len.nder, 83, 84 
Heroes and Hero - Worship , 314, 315 


422 


INDEX 


Heroic couplet, the, 177, 178, 182- 
183, 207, 211, 214 

Herrick, Robert, 33, 129, 140, ISO- 
152 

Hesperides and Noble Numbers, 151 
Hexameters, 84 
Heywood, John, 93 
Heywood, Thomas, 130 
“ Hidden Flower, The,” Vaughan’s 
poem, 156 

“ Highland Reaper, The,” 276 
Highlands, 358 
Hild, abbess of Whitby, 13 
Hind and the Panther , The, 178, 179 
Hippolita, 110 
Historia Bretonum, 24 
Historical novels, 362, 373 
History of England, Macaulay, 311 
History of Friedrich II, 314 
History of the Rebellion, Clarendon’s, 
147 

History of the World, The, Raleigh’s, 
86 

Hoccleve. See Occleve 
Hogarth, 200 
“ Hohenlinden,” 283 
Holbein, Hans, 63 
Holland, 80, 172 
Holofernes, 13 
Holy Grail, the, 323 
Holyhead, 27 

Holy Living and Holy Dying, 145- 
146 

“Holy Willie,” 268 
Homer, 180, 204, 209 
Homer, Chapman’s, 83-84 
Homer, Pope’s, 207-208, 209 
Homilies, 19 
Honeycomb, Will, 200 
Hooker, Richard, 26 
Horace, 180, 205, 207 
Horton, 158, 159, 161, 167 
Hours of Idleness, 284 
House of Fame, The, 37, 38 
House of Life, The, 331, 345, 346 
House of the Woljings, The, 348 
Houyhnhnms, 195, 196 
Howard, Henry, 65 (see Surrey) 
Howard, Lady Elizabeth, 178 
Hrolf the Ganger (Walker), 21 
Hrothgar, in Beowulf, 5, 6 
Hudibras, 184 
Hugh of Lincoln. 45, 46 
Humanism, 61, 62, 64, 82 
“ Humour,” 126 
Humphrey Clinker, 242, 243 
Hunt, Leigh, 292-293, 294 
Hyde Park, 137 
Hygelac, 5 

“ Hymn of Heavenly Beauty,” 77, 7S 
“Hymn of Heavenly Love,” 77, 78 


“ Hymns in Honor of Love and 
Beauty,” 77, 78 
“ Hymn on the Nativity,” 153 
“ Hymn to St. Theresa,” 155 
Hypatia, 375 
“ Hyperion,” 294, 297 

Iago, 118 
Ibsen, 369 
Icelandic, 260, 348 
Idea, 85 

Idea of a University, The, 342 
“ Idiot Boy, The,” 280 
Idler, The, 214 

Idylls of the King, 320, 321, 323, 323 
Iliad, Chapman’s, 83 
Iliad, The, 204 
“ II Penseroso,” 159, 255, 259 
Imaginary Conversations, 305, 306- 
307 

“ Imitations of Horace,” 209 
Imogen, 121 

“ Imperfect Sympathies,” 301 
India, 39 

Indian Emperor, The, 186 
Indian Queen, The, 186, 187 
Individualism, 120, 175, 176, 208, 209, 
323, 324, 366 
“ Induction, The,” 68 
Inductive method, 141 
In Memoriam, 291, 319, 320, 323 
Inner Temple, the, 96 
Inns of Court, 144 
Instauratio Magna, 141 
“Institutes of a Christian Prince,” 62 
Interludes, 93 

Ireland, 9, 12, 18, 77, 78, 79, 190, 192, 
224, 225, 288, 354 
Irene, 214 
Irish Melodies, 292 
Irish, the, 29 
“ Isabella,” 294 
Isle of Wight, 320 
Israel, 157, 329 
Italian liberation, 325 
Italian painters, 343 
Italian poetry, 298 
Italian poets, 293 
Italian style, 254 
Italian verse forms, 72, 73 
Italian, The, 251 

Italy, 24, 36-37, 38, 46, 61, 65, 71, 
144, 146, 155, 162, 177, 197. 285, 
289, 295, 305, 324, 325, 326, 331, 341 
“ It is a beauteous evening,” 274 
lvanhoe, 357 

Jack Wilton , 75 

Jacobean dramatists. See Restora- 
tion, 186, 187, 188 
Jacobites, 361 


IKDEX 


423 


Jacques, 114 

James L, of England, 119, 121, 125, 
133, 135, 140, 144, 170 
James L, of Scotland, 57-58 
James II., of England, 185, 312 
James 1 V. (Greene), 103, 104 
Jane Eyre , 374 
Janet, in Waver ley, 359 
Jarrow, 12, 18 
Jar vie, Baillie, 359 
Jenkins, Win, in Humphrey 
Clinker, 243 

Jenkinson, in Vicar of Wakefield, 
247 


Jerusalem, 54 
Jesus, 167 

Jew of Malta , The, 103, 131 
Jews, the, 45 
Joan of Arc, 304 

John, King Alfred’s mass-priest, 19 
“John Gilpin,” 264 
John of Gaunt, 36, 37 
Johnson, Esther, 192 
Johnson, Samuel, 153, 157, 180, 
201, 222, 223, 248, 262, 312, 314 ; his 
life, 212 ; works, 213 ; his classi- 
cism, 214 ; his reaction against 
classicism, 215 ; his personality 
and character, 216-217 
“Jolly Beggars, The,” 269 
Jonah, 32 

Jonathan Wilde , 239, 240 
Jones, Inigo, 125 

Jonson, Ben, 97, 106, 108, 139, 140, 
143, 148, 177, 180, 188 ; his opin- 
ion of Shakespeare, 122 ; his life, 
124 ; his classicism, 125 ; his “ hu- 
mours,” 1.26; his realism, 127; his 
lyric gift, 127 ; dictatorship, 128 ; 
his influence, 129 
Joseph Andrews, 239 
Jo urnal of the Plague Year, 233 
Journal to Stella, 191 
Jude the Obscure, 381 
Judgment, The Last, 92 
Judith, 13 

“ Julian and Maddalo,” 293 
Juliet, 111, 113, 116, 121 
Julius Ccesar , 115, 126 
Justice-bench, 22 
Jutes, the, 1, 5, 11, 18 
Jutland, 1 
Juvenal, 180 


Kant, Emanuel, 270, 272 
Keats, John, 177, 255, 262, 289, 
291, 292, 307, 310, 322, 330, 351 ; 
his inspiration, 293 ; life and po- 
etic development, 294; his wor- 
ship of beauty, 295 ; qualities of 
his poetry, 296; his sense of form, 


296 ; his humanity, 297 ; his influ- 
ence, 297-298 

Keble, John, 332, 341, 346 
Kenilworth, 357, 361 
Kenilworth Castle, 106 
Kent, 37, 49 
Kew Lane, 255 
Kidnapped, 382, 383 
Kilcolman, manor of, 77 
Kilmarnoch, 268 
King Edward, 161 
King James Bible, the, 169-170 
King John, 111 
King Lear, 113, 115, 119-120 
Kingsley, Charles, 331, 341, 375- 
376 

“ King’s Tragedy, The,” 345 
“ King’s Treasuries,” 338 
King's Quair, 57, 58 
Kitte, wife of Langland, 52 
Knight's Tale , 28, 47, 57 
Knight, the, in Canterbury Tales, 
42, 45 

“ Kubla Khan,” 271, 272, 273 
Kyd, Thomas, 131 

“ Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” 331 
Lady Meed, in Piers the Plowman, 
54 

“ Lady of Shalott, The,” 318 
Lady of the Lake , The, 282 
Lake country, the, 258, 273, 339 
Lake poets, 281 , 302 
Lalla Rookh , 292 
“ L’ Allegro,” 159, 166, 255 
Lamb Charles, his life, 299 ; his 
criticism, 300-301 ; his style, 301 , 
307 

Lamia, 293, 294, 296, 297 
Lancelot, 322, 323 

Landor, Walter Savage, his life 
and genius, 304-305 ; Imaginary 
Conversations , 306; Pericles and 
Aspasia, 307 
Languish, Lydia, 221 
Lara, 285 
Laracor, 191 

Last Chronicle of Barset , The, 372 
Last Days of Pompeii, The, 362 
Last of the Barons, The, 362 
Last Poems (Mrs. Browning), 331 
“ Last Ride Together, The,” 330 
Latimer, Bishop Hugh, 64, 65 
Latin, 15, 16, 18, 49, 64, 73, 74, 78, 93, 
109, 170, 176, 

Latin drama, 95 
Latin-English, 65 
Latin models, 94 

Latin Vulgate, 141, 142, 143, 147, 158, 
159, 182, 198, 214, 309 
Latter-Day Pamphlets, 314 


424 


INDEX 


Launce, in Two Gentlemen of Ve- 
rona, 109 
Laura, 60 
Law courts, 130 
Lawes, Henry, 160 
Layamon, 24 

Layamon’s Brut, 25 et seq. 

Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 282 
Lays, 5 

Lays of Ancient Borne, 37 
Lazarus, 328 

“ Lead, Kindly Light,” 341 
Lear, 119-120, 131 
“ Leech-Gatherer, The,” 274, 276 
Legend of Goode Wommen, The, 37, 
39, 40, 48 
Leghorn, 289 

Leicester, Earl of, 71, 77, 79, 80, 106 
“ Lenore,” Burger’s, 282 
“ Lent is come with love to town,” 33 
Leo XIII., Pope, 342 
Leofric, 306 
Leovenath, 25 
Le Sage, 367 
Letters, Gray’s, 257 
“ Letters on a Regicide Peace,” 220 
“ Letters to a Young Lady,” 201 
“ Levanaand Our Ladies of Sorrow,” 
303 

Lewes, G. H., 376 
Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 251 
Levden, 238 
“Lie, The,” 86 

Life and Death of Jason, The, 347 
Life of Johnson, 216-217, 218 
Life of Nelson, 281 
Life of Schiller, 314 
Life of John Sterling, 314 
“ Like totheclear in highest sphere,” 
75 

Lilliput, 194-195, 369 
Linacre, Thomas, 62 
Lincolnshire, 318 
“ Lines in Early Spring,” 274 
“Litany, The,” 152 
Literary Club, the, 180, 218 
Literature and Dogma , 336 
Little Dorrit, 366 
Little Gidding, 155 
Little Nell, in Old Curiosity Shop, 
366 

Littlemore, 341 

Lives of the Poets, 214, 215, 262 
“ Lochiel,” 283 
Lodge, Thomas, 75, 85 
Lollares (idlers), 53 
Lollards, the, 45, 64 
Lollard movement, 50 
London, 23, 50, 52, 53, 62, 77, 78, 79, 
88, 97, 107, 109, 112, 126, 127, 129, 
135, 150, 151, 158, 168, 174, 179, 180, 


188, 191, 204, 218, 221, 224, 235, 238, 
244, 253, 255, 262, 264, 271, 301, 314, 
319, 324, 346, 355, 364, 371 
“London ” (Dr. Johnson), 214 
London Bridge, 42 
London Fire, 179 
London Magazine , 300 
“ Long Will.” See Langland, 52 
Lord Admiral’s Men, 100 
Lord Chamberlain’s Men, 100 
Lords, House of, 226 
Loretto, Our Lady of, 155 
“ Lotus-Eaters, The,” 318 
Louis XI., 361 
Louis XIV., 191, 361 
L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 274 
Lore for Love, 189 
“ Love in my bosom like a bee,” 75 
Lovelace, Richard, 148, 149 
Lovelace (in Clarissa Harlow e), 236- 
237 

Love poetry, 16, 40, 58, 66, 85 
“ Lover’s Message, The,” 16 
Love’s Labour’s Lost, 199 
‘ 1 Love Rune ” of Thomas de Hales 
30 

Lowell, J. R.,132 
Lowland dialect, 267 
Lowlands, 282, 313 
Lucas, Sir William, 356 
Lucifer, 164 
Lucrece, 108 
Lucretia (Bulwer), 362 
Lucy, Sir Thomas, 107 
Ludlow Castle, 160 
Lumpkin, Tony, 220 
Luther, 51, 61 

Luxury of a Vain Imagination, The, 
214 

Lycidas, 161, 162, 165, 191 
Lydgate, John, 56-57, 58, 68, 378 
Lyly, George, 69, 70-71, 74, 75, 98- 
99, 100, 109, 183 
Lyme, 355 

Lyrical Ballads, 271, 273, 277, 283, 
304, 305 

Lyric poetry, English, 4, 16, 75, 149, 
151, 182, 211, 248, 256, 290, 292, 319, 
343, 346 

Lyrics, Elizabethan, 85, 86, 87, 93, 96, 
98 

Macaulay, T. B., 249; life, 810- 
311 ; his essays, their style, 311 ; 
History of England, 312 ; his un- 
ideal view of life, 313 
Macbeth, 113, 114, 118-119, 126 
Macbeth, Lady, 119 
MacFlecknoe, 179, 210 
Mackenzie, Henry, 246 
Macwheeble, Baillie, 359 


INDEX 


425 


Madame Eglantine, in Canterbury 
Tales, 43 

Madeline (in St. Agnes' Eve), 296 
Magdalen College, Cambridge, 185 
Magdalen College, Oxford, 70 
Maid of Honour, The, 136 
Maid's Tragedy, The, 133 
Malaprop, Mrs., 221 
Malherbe, 176 

Malory, Sir Thomas, 58, 321 
Malta, 103 
Malvern, 52, 53 
Malvolio, 114 
Manchester, 302, 376 
Manfred, 285, 351 
Manley, Mrs., 248 
Man of Feeling , The, 246 
Mansfield Parle, 357 
Marat, 317 
Marathon, 69 
Marcellus, 306 

Margaret (in Friar Bacon, and Friar 
Bungay), 103-104 
Margaret (in The Pearl), 31 
Margaret (in The Prelude), 367 
Margery, in The Shoemakers' Holi- 
day, 129 

Maria (in The Sentimental Journey), 
245 

Maria (in Twelfth Night), 114 
Maries, the three, 89 
Marini, 144 

Marlborough, Duke of, 199, 371 
Marlowe, Christopher, 74, 83, 84, 
86,96, 100; his programme, 101; 
his plays, 102 ; his career, 103, 107 ; 
influence on Shakespeare, 108, 109, 
131, 133, 159, 175 
Marmion, 282 
Marseilles, 341 
Marshalsea Prison, 363 
Martin Chuzzlewit, 365 
Marvell, Andrew, 150, 152, 163 
Mary, 31 

Mary Barton, 376 
Mary, Queen, 68, 69 
Mary, Queen of Scots, 80 
Masques, 88, 110, 125, 148, 160 
Massinger, Philip, 136 
Master of Ballantrae, The, 382 
Maud, 320 
Maupassant, de, 384 
May-day, 40 
“ May Queen, The,” 318 
Mead-cup, 6 

Mead- drinking, in Beowulf, 5 
Mead-hall, 3, 8, 13 
Measure for Measure, 115, 116 
Medal, The, 179 
Mediaeval romances, 348 
Mediterranean, 289 


Medway, the, 80 

Melibeus, in Canterbury Tales, 46 
Memoirs, Gibbon’s, 222-223 
Menaeclimi, 109 

Mephistopheles, in Doctor Faustus, 
102 

Merchant, the, in Canterbury 
Tales, 44 

Merchant of Venice , The, 113 
Mercutio, 111 

Meredith, George, 200, 369, 379- 
380,381,382 

“ Merlin and the Gleam,” 321 
Mermaid, The, tavern, 128, 132, 180 
Merrilies, Meg, 360 
Merry Andrew, 93 
Merry Wives of Windsor, 113 
“ Metaphysicai School,” the, 153 
Metre, 32, 55-56, 65, 73, 78, 83, 219 
Metrical romances, 23 et seq. 
Meyricks, the, in Daniel Deronda, 
377 

Micawber, in David Copperjield, 365 
“ Michael,” 274, 277 
Michael Angelo, 160 
Middle Ages, the, 24, 35, 39, 41. 42, 
48, 51, 60,89,91, 155,256, 260, 282, 
340, 341, 342, 343 
Middle class, 235, 237, 372 
Middlemarch, 377, 378 
Middlesex, 313 

Middleton, Thomas, 127, 130-131 
188 

Midsummer Night's Dream, 1 10, 1 13 
121, 156 

“ Migration,” the, 11 
Mill, John Stuart, 376 
Mill on the Floss, The, 377 
Miller, the, in Canterbury Tales, 
45 

“ Miller’s Daughter, The,” 318 
Milton, John, 82, 104, 129, 140, 145, 
147, 152,153, 181, 184, 200, 222, 255, 
256, 259, 274, 277, 291, 293, 294, 295, 
307, 321, 322,350; life, 158; the 
Horton period, 158-159 ; Comus, 
160; his seriousness, 161; public 
life, 162; prose writings, 162-3; 
Paradise Lost , 163-166 ; his “ sub- 
limity,” 165-166; his style. 166- 
167; Samson Agonistes, 167-168; 
last years, 168 ; character, 169 ; his 
influence, 170 

Milton, Macaulay’s essay on, 311 
Minsters, 22 
Minvane, in Fingal, 261 
Mirabeau, 317 
Miracle-plays, 89, 93, 106 
Mirror for Magistrates, The, 68 
Missolonghi, 285 
Mistress of Philarete, 150 


426 * 


INDEX 


Mistress, The, Cowley, 157 
Modern Painters, 337, 338 
Modest Proposal, 194 
Mohun, in Henry Esmond, 371 
Moliere, 176, 188, 189 
Moll Flanders, 234, 235 
Monimia, in The Orphan, 187 
Monk, General, 163 
Monk, The, 251 

Monk, the, in Canterbury Tales , 
43,45 

Monks, 9, 18, 19, 30, 89 
Monmouth, Duke of, 179 
Montpellier, 146 
Moore, Thomas, 292-293 
“ Moral Epistles,” 205, 209 
Morality Plays, 92, 93 
More, Sir Thomas, 62, 63, 64, 181 
Morgain, 28 

Morris, Dinah, in Middlemarch, 377, 
378 

Morris, William, his medievalism, 
346-347 ; The Earthly Paradise, 
347 ; his socialism, 348-349 
Morte d* Arthur, 26, 58, 59, 319, 321 
Mortimer, 84 

Morton, in Old Mortality, 360, 361 
Mossgiel, 268 

“ Mountain Daisy, The,” 281 
“ Mower to the Glow Worms, The,” 
152 

Much Ado About Nothing, 113 

Munera Pulveris, 338 

Musophilus, 84 

“ My Last Duchess,”. 328 

“ My mind to me a Kingdom is,” 86 

My Novel, 363 

“ My Sister’s Sleep,” 344 

“ My Star,” 330 

Mysteries, 89 

Mysteries of LJdolpho, 251 
Mysticism, 29, 51, 146, 265, 271, 277, 
312 

“ Nabob of Arcot’s Debts, The,” 225 
Namancos, 166 
Napoleon, 283, 370 
Napoleonic War, 361 
Nash, Thomas, 74, 75 
Nature, in English literature, 14, 15, 
34, 152, 153, 156, 206, 211, 247, 249, 
254, 256, 258, 270, 275-276, 278, 279, 
292 375 

“ Necessity of Atheism,” 288 
“Necessity of Punctuality,” 224 
Nelson, Life of, 287 
Neo-romanticism, 382 
Nether Stowey, 271 
“ Never the Time and the Place,” 
326 

New Arabian Nights, The, 383 


Newbold, Revell, 58 
Newcome, Colonel, 370 
Newcomes, The, 370 
Newman, John Henry, 332, 333, 
336, 346, 349 ; his effort, 340 ; his 
religious history, 341 ; his prose 
style, 342 ; his influence on litera- 
ture, 342 

News from Nowhere, 349 
New Way to Pay Old Debts, 36 
Nicholas Nickleby, 366 
Nicholas of Hereford, 51 
Niebelungen, 9 
“ Night of Spurs, The,” 317 
“ Night Piece to Julia,” 152 
Nineteenth Century, 228 et seq. 

Night Thoughts, 257 

Noah, in miracle plays, 90, 91, 92 

Norfolk, 146, 265 

Norman Conquest, the, 19, 22 et seq., 
34 

Normandy, 21 
Norman-French, 347 
Norman-French period, the, 11, 21, 
26, 32, 51 

Norna of the Fitful Head, 360 
Norris, 104 
North and South, 376 
Northamptonshire, 178 
Northanger Abbey, 355 
Northmen, 347 
Northumbria, 12, 17, 18 
Norton, Thomas, 68, 96, 101 
Norwich, 146 
Nosce Teipsum, 85 
Novel, The, in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, 221 ; relations to drama in 
eighteenth century, 229 ; mediae- 
val sources, 230 ; during the Eng- 
lish Renaissance, 231 ; during the 
seventeenth century, 231 ; its real 
beginnings with Defoe, 232-235 ; 
its moralization, 235 ; Richardson, 
235-238 ; written for the middle 
classes, 237 ; Fielding, 238-241 ; as 
a picture of life, 239, 249 ; as a 
literary form, 240 ; its humanity, 
242, 246 ; enlarged area of, 248 ; 
biographic scheme of, 243 ; Sterne, 
244-246 ; reaction toward whole- 
someness, 247 ; realism, 247 ; 
women’s novels, 248 ; romantic 
movement 249; “gothic,” 250; 
with a purpose, 252, 381, 354; its 
categories, 353 ; local color, 355 ; 
the romantic impulse in Scott, 357 ; 
use of criminal life with Bulwer, 
362 ; children, 366 ; with a purpose, 
373 ; Stevenson, 383 
Novum Organum, 141 
Nunappleton, 152 


INDEX 


427 


“ Obermann,” 333 
“ Obermann Once More,” 334 
Oberon, 110 
Ochiltree, Edie, 359 
Occleve, Thomas, 57 
“ Ode to Cromwell ” (Marvell’s), 152 
“ Ode on the Duke of Wellington,” 
320 

“ Ode to Duty” (Wordsworth), 274 
“ Ode to Evening,” 256 
“ Ode on the Intimations of Immor- 
tality,” 274, 279-280 
“ Ode on Nativity,” 165 
“ Ode on the Passions ” 256 
“ Ode to the West Wind,” 289 
Odes (Collins’s), 256 
Odes (Dryden’s), 182 
Odes (Gray’s), 258 
Odes, Keats’s, 296, 297 
Odyssey , Chapman’s, 83 ; Pope’s, 
24 

Of Great Place , Bacon’s essay, 143 

“ Of Heroic Plays,” 183 

Old Age (in Morality Plays), 92 

“ Old China,” 301 

Old Curiosity Shop , 365 

Old English, 1 

Old Father Christmas, 93 

Old Fortunatus, 129 

Old King Cole, 93 

Old Mortality , 360 

Old Testament, the, 13 

Old Wife's Tale, The , 104 

Oliver Twist, 365, 366 

Olivia, in Vicar of Wakefield, 247 

Olney, 264 

Olympus, 88 

4 ‘ On the Death of Mr. William Her- 
vey ” (Milton), 157 
11 On a Distant Prospect of Eton 
College ” (Gray), 258 
“ On First Looking into Chapman’s 
Homer,” 294 

“On a Grecian Urn” (Keats), 294, 
295, 296 

“On Idleness” (Dr. Johnson), 214 
“ On Melancholy,” 294 
“On the Morning of Christ’s Na- 
tivity” (Milton), 158, 159 
“ On Spring ” (Gray), 258 
“ On the Popular Superstitions of 
the Scottish Highlands” (Collins), 
256, 259 

“ On the Receipt of My Mother’s 
Picture ” (Cowper), 265 
44 On the Tenure of Kings and Mag- 
istrates ” (Milton), 163 
“ On Translating Homer” (Arnold), 
336 

“ One Word More,” 330 
One of Our Conquerors, 379 


Ophelia, 116 
Orchestra , Davies’s, 85 
Ordeal of Richard Fever at. The. 
379 

Oriel College, Oxford, 341 
Origin of Species, The, 320 
Orlando Furioso, 81 
Orosius, 19 
Orphan , Ihe, 187 
Osiris, 303 
Ossian, 262, 282 

Othello , 113, 115, 117-118, 120, 126 
O’Trigger, Sir Lucius, 221 
Ottava rima, 81 
OtterySt Mary’s, 271 
Otway, Thomas, 187 
Ouse, river, 264 
Overreach, Sir Giles, 126 
Ovid, 180, 207 
Ovid’s Banquet of Sense, 83 
Oxford, 29, 44, 50, 62, 63, 70, 91, 94, 
148, 156, 198, 201, 271, 288, 302, 
303, 332, 340, 346 
Oxford, Earl of, 22, 86 
Oxford movement, the, 340, 342 
Oxford Street, 303 
Padua, 38, 46, 146 
Pageants, in miracle plays, 89-90 
Pair of Blue Byes, A, 380 
Palace of Art, 318 
Palamon, 45, 57, 180 
Palermo, 341 
Palestine, 328 

Pamela, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239 
Pamphlets, 74 
Pandarus, 39 
Pantheon, 258 
Pantisocracy, 271 
Paola and Francesca, 293 
Papists, 155, 179 
Paracelsus, 324 

Paradise Lost, 152, 153, 164-167 
Paradise Regained, 153, 167 
Paris, 30, 155 

Paris (city), 21, 71, 242, 244 
Pardoner, the, in Canterbury Tales, 
43 

Parlement of Foules, 37, 38, 47 
Parliament, 22, 37, 41, 137, 138, 156, 
202, 204, 223, 225, 311 
Parson, the, in Canterbury Tales, 
43, 45, 46 

“ Partridge Predictions, The,” 193 
“ Passing of Arthur,” 321 
Past and Present, 335 
Pastoral Care, or Shepherd's Book, 
19 

Pastorals, 72, 87, 161, 207 
Pastorals (Pope’s), 204 
Patience, 32 

Patient Grissel, the Clerk’s Tale, 46 


428 


INDEX 


Patronage, 354 
Patronage, 60, 100 
Paul Clifford, 362 
Pauline, 324, 326 
Peace, in miracle plays, 92 
Pearl, The, 31 et seq. 

Pecksniff, 365 
Peebles, Peter, 359 
Peele, George, 74, 100, 104-105, 
107 

Peg Woflington, 373 
Pelham, the Adventures of a Gen- 
tleman, 362 

Pembroke, Countess of, 72 
Pembroke, Earl of, 108 
Penitential Psalms (Wyatt’s), 66 
Pepys, Samuel, 185 
Percy, Bishop, 260 
“ Percy and Douglas,” 74 
Perdita, 121 

Peregrine Pickle , 242, 243 
Pericles, 97 

Pericles and Aspasia, 305, 307 
Periodicals, 197 
Persius, 180 
Personifications, 255 
Persuasion, 355 
Peterborough, 19 
Peter the Great, 233 
Peterhouse, 155 
Petrarch, 38, 46, 66 
Petre, Lord (in Rape of the Lock), 
208 

Philaster , 133 
Philip of Spain, 29, 80 
Philippa, Chaucer’s wife, 37 
Philistinism, 335, 336 
Philostrato, 38 
Phoenix, The, 14, 15 
Phoenix's Nest, The, 85 
Phyllis , 85 

Picaresque stories, 367 
“ Pictor Tgnotus,” 329 
Pickwick Papers , 364 
Piers Plowman, 44, 52, 53, 55, 55-56 
Pilgrim's Progress, 54, 171, 173, 185,. 

232 et seq. 

Pmdar, 157 

Pindaric Ode (Gray’s), 259 
“ Pindarique Odes,” 157 
Pipes, in Roderick Random , 243 
Pip pa Passes, 325, 326, 327 
Pirate, The , 360 
Plague, the, 233 
Plagues, in England, 49, 51 
Plaindealer, The, 189 
Plantagenet, 225 
Plato, 78, 81, 293, 312 
Plautus, 94, 109, 125 
Plays, 24, 89, 93, 123 
Plegmund (archbishop), 19 


Plowman, the, in Canterbury Tales, 
43 

Poems and Ballads (Swinburne), 349 
Poems before Congress, 331 
Poems of Monarchy, 85 
Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect 
(Burns), 268 
Poetaster , The, 125 
Poetical Rhapsody , 85 
Poetical Sketches (Blake), 266 
Poet laureate, 125, 179, 320 
Poetry. 1, 13, 24, 26, 67, 68, 83, 145, 
178, 203 

Political Justice, 288 
Political Economy, Ruskin’s, 338 
Polonius, 116 
Polyolbion , 84 

Pope, 129, 176, 180, 190, 214, 219, 
241, 253, 263, 284 ; life, 204 ; lim- 
itations, 205 ; poetic qualities, 206 ; 
Homer, 207 ; Rape of the Lock, 
20S ; character, 209 ; satire, 209 ; 
Essay on Man, 210 ; his contempo- 
raries, 211, 212 

Pope of Glasgow, the (Campbell), 
283 

Pope, the, 61, 62, 79 

Porphyro, in St. Agnes' Eve, 296 

Portia', 113, 116 

“Portrait, The,” 344 

Portugal, 61, 104, 238 

Poyser, Mrs., 377 

Praeterita, 339, 340 

Prelude, The, 274 

Preraphaelites, the, 342, 343, 344, 349 

Pricke of Conscience, The, 30 

Pride and Prejudice, 356, 357 

Prince Hal, 112 

Prince Regent, The, 293 

Princess, The, 319, 323 

Printing, 59, 61 

Prioress, the, in Canterbury Tales, 
43, 45 

“ Progress of Poetry, The,” 259 
Prometheus Unbound, 289-290 
Prose, English, 51 , 65, 71, 76, 86, 140, 
143, 147, 170, 183-184, 203, 216,245, 
295, 303, 304, 339 
Prospero, 121, 122 
Protestant Cemetery at Rome, 289 
“ Prothalamion,” 77 
Proudie, Mrs., 372 
Provence, 24 
Prussia, 42, 315 
Pseudo classic, 215, 259 
Psychology, in modern novel, 379 
Public Ledger, 218 
Publishers, Elizabethan, 67, 71 
Puck, 110, 156 
Pullets, the, 377 
Purgatorio (Leigh Hunt), 293 


IKDEX 


429 


Puritans and puritanism, 71, 74, 75, 
76, 82, 83, 134, 135, 136, 137, 145, 
146, 158, 161, 170, 172, 174, 175, 184, 
185, 186, 188, 200, 235, 237, 335 
Purvey, John, 51 
Put Yourself in his Place, 373 
Pyramus, 110 

Quakers, 301 
Quantock Hills, 271 
Quatrain, Landor’s last, 306 
Queen Mab, 288 
*' Queen’s Garden,” 339 
Quentin Durward , 357, 361 
Quibbles, Elizabethan, 97 
Quilp, in Old Curiosity Shop, 365 
Quixote, 246 

Racine, 176 

Radcliffe, Anne. 251, 355, 374 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 69, 77, 79, 
81, 86, 184 

Ralph Royster Royster, 94, 125 
Ralpho, 184 

Rambler, The, 214, 215-216 
Rape of the Lock, The, 204, 205 
Raphael, in Paradise Lost, 164 
Rationalism, 227 
Reade, Charles, 372-373 
Realism, 127, 175, 247, 248, 263, 343, 
372, 373, 384 

Red Cross Knight, the, 80 
Redgauntlet , 359 

Reformation, the; 43, 51, 61-62, 64, 
68, 82, 154, 161, 373 
Reform Bill of 1832, 309, 310 
Regan, 120 
Rehearsal, The , 187 
Religio Laid, 179, 182 
Religio Medici, 145 
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 
260 

Renaldo, in Count Fathom, 242 
Renaissance, The, 37, 38, 41, 48, 72, 
74, 83, 140, 141, 159, 174, 175, 176, 
190 ; defined, 60 ; elements, 61 ; 
in England, 62-63, 68 ; its cult, 69 ; 
poetry, 76 ; learning, 7S ; problems, 
79 ; sensuousness, 82 ; popularity 
of the drama, 88 ; intellectual curi- 
osity, 93 ; influence of Prance, 176 
Renaissance, the Second, 293 
Restoration, the, 99, 124, 139. 152, 
168, 171, 174, 190, 215 ; drama, 222, 
245 

Restoration comedy, 137, 139, 169, 
188-189 

Return of the Druses, 325 
Return of the Native, The, 93 
Revelation, 89 
“ Revenge, The,” 320 


Review, The , 232 
Revolution of 1 688, the, 180 
Rheims, 35, 258 
Rhodope, 306 
Rhone, 340 

Rhyme, 32, 55, 66, 73, 81, 87, 177, 
186-187 

Rhyme of Sir T hop as, The, 46 
Rhyme, Royal, 47, 57 
Rhythm, 32 et seq., 47 
Rich, Lady. See Devereux, 72 
Rich, Lord, 72 
Richard I., 361 
Richard II. , 37, 53 
Richard II., Ill 
Richard III., 109, 111 
Richard the Redeless, 53 
Richardson, Samuel, 238, 239 
240, 245, 248, 249, 262; Pamela , ' 
235 ; his method, 236 ; his char- 
acter and purpose, 237 
Richardson (the painter), 168 
Richelieu, 176 
Richmond, Duke of, 66 
Richmond Gardens, 256 
Riddles (Cynewulf), 14, 15 
Rienzi, 362 

Ring and the Book, The, 325 
Rivals, The, 221 
River of Death, The, 172 
Roaring Girl, The, 127 
Robespierre, 317 
Robin Hood, 93, 346 
Robin Hood Plays, 93 
Robinson Crusoe, 194, 234, 235 
Rob Roy, 359 

Rochester, in Jane Eyre , 374 
Rockingham, Marquis of, 225, 
Roderick Random, 242 
Rolle, Richard, 29 
Roman de la Rose, 35, 36, 40, 49 
Roman Empire, The Decline and 
Fall of the, 223 

Romances, 26, 40, 72 ; and see novel, 
354 

Romantic revolt, the, 315 
Romanticism, 126, 157, 159, 176, 219, 
220, 221, 227-228, 266, 323, 358, 383 ; 
in the novel, 249-252; in eigh- 
teenth century, 253 et seq. ; its re- 
turn to nature, 270; Coleridge, 
271, 272; Wordsworth, 273-280; 
Southey, 281 ; Scott, 282-283 ; 
Campbell, 283; Byron, 284-287; 
Shelley, 288-292; ' Moore, 292; 
Keats, 293-298 ; Criticism, 298 ; 
Hazlitt, 298-299 ; Lamb, 293-301 ; 
De Quincey, 302-304 
Rome, 11, 12, 18, 61, 64, 79 
Romeo and Juliet, 97. 110, 111, 113 
Romola , 378 


430 


IHDEX 


Roots of the Mountains , The, 348 
Rosalind (in As You Like I(), 113, 
116 

Rosalynde, 75 
“Rose Aylmer,” 305 
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 117 
Rossetti, Christina, 343 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 331 ; 
parentage, 343 ; his imagery, 344 ; 
later life and poetry, 344-345 ; his 
‘ ‘ painter’s ” poetry, 346 ; his influ- 
ence on Morris, 347 
Rossetti, William Michael, 343 
Round Table, the, 11, 26, 28, 59, 320 
Roxana, 234 
Royal Society, the, 185 
Rugby, 332 

Ruskin, John, early life and art 
criticism, 336-337 ; ethical and eco- 
nomic teaching, 338 ; his style, 
339; influence on Preraphaelites, 
342 ; medievalism, 349 
Russia, 287, 324 
Russian Literature, 384 
Rydal Mount, 274 

Sackville, Thomas, 68, 69, 96, 
101 

Sacrifice of Isaac, the, 90, 92 
“ Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos 
Barton, The,” 376 
“ Sailing of the Sword, The,” 347 
St. Albans, 140. See Bacon 
St. Cecilia’s Day (ode), 183 
St. George, 88, 93 
St. Mark’s, 339-340 
St. Mary’s, Oxford, 341 
St. Mary Redcliffe, 261 
St. Patrick’s, Dublin, 192 
St. Paul’s, 145 
St. Peter, 162 

St. Philip Neri, Oratory of, 341 
Salisbury, 154 
Salvator Rosa, 251 
Samoa, 383 

Samson Agonistes, 167-168, 350 
Sandford and Merton , 252 
Sartor Resartns, 316-317 
Satan, 167 

Satires, 205, 208, 210 
Satires, Dryden’s, 179 
“ Saul,” 329 

Saxons, the, 11, 12, 18, 32, 34, 41 
SohafFh arisen, 340 
Schiller, Life of, by Carlyle, 314 
“ Scholar Gypsy, The,” 334 
School for Scandal, The, 221,222 
School of Abuse, The, 74 
Schoolmaster, The, 64 
Schoolmistress, The, 255 
Science, 307 


Sc6p, 3, 4, 10, 13 
Scotch, 324 

“ Scotch Drink, The ” (Burns), 268 
Scotch highlands, 260 
Scotchmen, 301 

Scotland, 135, 243, 256, 267, 268, 276, 
292, 313, 357, 358, 359, 360, 383 
Scots, 162 

Scott, Sir Walter, 228, 250, 275, 
282, 292, 307, 355, 362, 363, 367, 313, 
377, 383, 384; as a poet, 282-283, 
284; his career as novelist, 357;. 
his romanticism, 358 ; his use of 
scene, 358 ; his characters, 359 ; his 
love of the past, 360 ; his use of 
incident, 360 ; his use of history, 
361 

Scriblerus Club. 205 
Seasons, The, 254, 255 
Sedley, Amelia, 368 ; in Vanity Fair , 
Joseph, 369 
Seeva, 303 
Sej anas, 125 

“ Self-Dependence,” 334 
Selkirk, Alexander, 233 
Seneca, 94, 95, 96-97, 125 
Sense and Sensibility, 355, 356 
“ Sensitive Plant, The,” 289 
Sentimental Journey, 244 
Seraphim, The, 331 
Serious Reflections of Robinson 
Crusoe, 234 

Sesame and Lilies, 338, 339 
Seven Lamps of Architecture, 337 
Seventeenth Century Literature, 76, 
139 et s<q. 

Severn, Joseph, 295 
Shaftsbury, 179 

Shakespeare, William, 30, 39, 42, 
69, 72, 75, 77, 83, 92, 94, 97, 99, 100, 
103, 104, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 

133, 134, 139. 140, 156, 158, 159, 

176, 188, 209, 214, 215, 220, 246, 

294, 296, 298, 300, 307, 317, 320, 

327, 829, 331 ; life, 106-108; period 
of experiment, 109; earliest mas- 
terpieces, 110-111 ; historical plays, 
111-112; comic relief, 112; 
strengthening of his art, 113; joy- 
ous comedies, 113-114 ; change of 
spirit, 114; sonnets, 114-115; the 
dark comedies, 115-116 ; Hamlet, 
116; Othello, 117; Lear, 119; end 
of period of gloom, 120 ; last plays, 
121 ; contemporary appreciation, 
122; carelessness of fame, 123; 
his successors, 124 ; as an actor, 
125; his romanticism, 126 
“ Shameful Death,” 347 
Sharp, Becky, 368, 369, 370 
Shaving of Shagpat, The, 379 


INDEX 


431 


“ She dwelt among the untrodden 
ways,” 274 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 33, 262, 
285, 293, 295, 305, 306, 307, 310, 
315, 324, 351, 358 ; compared with 
Crashaw, 155 ; life and poetic de- 
velopment, 288 ; Prometheus Un- 
bound, 289-290 ; his lyrical gen- 
ius, 290 ; his myth-making power, 
291 ; unreality of his work, 292 ; 
influenced by Leigh Hunt, 293 
Shelton, John, 65 
Shenstone, William, 255 
Shepherds, 161 
Shepherd's Calendar, 77-79 
Shepherds' Week, 211 
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 221- 
222 

■ She Stoops to Conquer, 218, 220-221 
Shirley , 374 

Shirley, James, 137, 186, 188 
Shoemakers' Holiday , The , 94, 127, 
129 

Shortest Way with Dissenters, The, 
232 

Short View of the Prof anity and Im- 
morality of the English Stage , 189 
Shylock, 103 
Sicily, 341 
Siddall, Miss, 344 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 69, 72, 73, 74, 
75, 76, 86, 96, 139, 159, 181, 183 
Siege of Rhodes, 186 
Siena, 258 

Silent Woman, The, 129 
Silex SdntiUans, 156 
Sir Charles Crandison, 237, 238 
Sir Thomas More, 93 
“ Sister Helen,” 345 
“ Skylark,” 289, 291 
“ Slaughter of the Innocents, The,” 
92 

Smollett, Tobias, 242-243, 367 
Socrates, 307 
“ Sofa, The,” 264 
“ Sohrab and Rustum,” 344 
Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister , 328 
“Solitary Reaper,” 274 
Solmes, in Clarissa Harlowe, 236 
Somersby Rectory, 318 
“ Song at the Feast of Brougham 
Castle,” 274 

Songs of Innocence and Experience 
(Blake), 260, 283 

Sonnet, the, introduced into Eng- 
lish by Wyatt, 66; Shakespearean, 
67 ; Sidney’s, 72 ; Spenser’s, 77 ; 
Shakespeare’s, 114-115 
Sonnets from the Portuguese, 331 , 
332 

Sordello, 325 


Sorrel, Hetty, 377 

Southey, Robert, 271, 281, 284, 302 
South Sea House, 300 
South Seas, 383 
Southwark, 135 
Spain, 135, 144, 276 
Spanish rogue stories, 235. (See Pic- 
aresque) 

Specimens of English Dramatic Po- 
etry (Lamb), 300 
Spectator , The, 198, 199, 200, 203 
Speculum Meditantis, 49 
Spencer, Herbert, 376 
Spenser, Edmund, 11, 28, 69, 72, 74, 
86, 129,149, 152, 153, 158, 159, 161, 
176, 181, 293, 294, 296 ; life and 
works, 77 ; Cambridge period, 78 ; 
in London and Ireland, 79; his 
sytle, 79 ; morality, 80-81 ; his art, 
82-83 ; puritanism, 83 
Spenserian school, the, 162 
Spenserian stanza, the, 255 
“ Spring,” 254 

Squeers, in Nicholas Nickleby, 366 
“ Stage Player’s Complaint, The,” 
137 

Stanley, 375 
Statius, 56, 207 

Steele, Richard, 189, 198, 201, 202, 
301, 371 

Stella (Swift’s), 191, 192 
“ Stepping Westward,” 276 
Sterne, Laurence, 244-247, 248, 
263, 363 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 382-384 
Stiggins, the Rev. Mr. , in Pickwick, 
365 

Stones of Venice, 337, 340 
Story of Thebes, The, 56 
Story of the Glittering Plain , The, 
348 

Strawberry Hill, 260 
Stuarts, the, 133 

Style, 59, 73, 75, 79, 108, 223, 322 ; Sir 
Thomas Browne’s, 147 ; Addison’s, 
199, 201 ; Steele’s, 202 ; Swift’s, 
196 ; Pope’s, 207 ; Dr. Johnson’s, 
215-216; Burke’s, 228; Lamb’s, 
301 ; De Quincey’s, 303 ; Carlyle’s, 
317; Ruskin’s, 334, 340; New- 
man’s, 342 

“ Sublime and the Beautiful, Inquiry 
into Origin of our Ideas on the,” 

225 

Suckling, Sir John, 148, 149 
“ Summer,” 254 
“ Summum Bonum,” 326 
Surface, Charles, 221, 222 
Surface, Joseph, 221, 222 
Surface, Sir Oliver, 221 , 222 
Surrey, Earl of, 65, 66-67,68,76,81 


432 


INDEX 


Suspiria de Profundis, 302, 303 
Susquehanna, 27 L 

Swift, Jonathan, 180, 203, 205, 209, 
211, 212,219, 241, 369, 371; life, 
190; political career, 191 ; practical 
nature, 192; activity, 193; method, 
194; Gulliver, 195; attitude, 196 ; 
style, 196-197 

“ Swiftly walk over the western 
wave,” 290 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 
305 ; his poetry of revolt, 349 ; his 
verse mastery, 350 ; the last of the 
Victorian poets, 350; his dramas, 
351 

Switzerland, 258, 285, 286, 337 
“ Switzerland,” 333 
Sykes, in Oliver Twist, 365 

Tale of a Tub , 191, 193, 194 

Tale of Two Cities, A, 365 

Tales from Shakespeare (Lamb), 300 

Tales of Clerical Life, 376 

Tales of the Hall, 263 

Talisman, The , 357, 361 

Tamburlaine , 100-102, 103, 182 

Taming of the Shrew, The , 113 

“ Tam o’ Shanter,” 269 

Tapley, Mark, 365 

Task, The , 264 

Tasso, 162 

Tatler , The, 198, 199, 202, 214 
Taylor, Jeremy, 145, 153, 197, 339 
Teazle, Sir Peter, 221 
Tempest, The, 121, 125 
Temple, The, 154, 156, 341 
Temple, Sir William, 191 
Tennyson, Alfred, 84, 275, 291, 
297, 307, 326, 330, 333, 350, 375; 
his birth, 318 ; his interest in pub- 
lic questions, 319 ; his science, 320 ; 
finish and compass of his style, 
322 ; his weak dramatic sense, 322 ; 
his sense of law, 323 ; contrasted 
with Browning, 323 
Terza rima, 290 

Tess of the JD ’ Urbervilles, 380, 381 
Teufelsdrock, Herr Diogenes, 315 
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 
372, 374, 383, 384 ; his influence on 
Bulwer, 362 ; structure of his 
novels, 368 ; his view of his art, 
369 ; his attitude toward the world, 
369 ; his use of history, 370 ; his 
greatnesst 371 
Thomas-a-Becket, 42 
Thomson, James, 212, 253-255, 256, 
258, 275, 298, 307 
Thyrsis, 291, 292, 334 
Timber, 128 

Timon of Athens, 115, 120-121 


“ Tintern Abbey,” 274, 278-279, 281 
Titus Andronicus, 108-109, 131 
“ To Althea from Prison,” 149 
“ To Lucasta on Going to the Wars,” 
149 

“Toa Nightingale,” 294, 296 
Toby, Uncle, 244, 246 
Tolstoi, 384 
Tom Jones, 239-240 
Tottel' s Miscellany, 67, 68 
Touchstone, 92, 114 
Toxophilus, 63 

Tragedy of Blood, 131, 134-135 
Traveller, The, 218, 219 
Travels of Sir John Ai^ndeville. 
The, 69 

Treasure Island, 382 
Trick to Catch the Old One, A, 131 
Trim, Corporal, in Tristram Shandy. 
246 

Tristram Shandy, 244, 245, 246 
29 

Troilus and Creseide, 37, 38-39, 48 
Troilus and Cressida, 115, 116 
Trollope, Anthony, 372 
Trouveres, 24, 26, 35, 59, 347, 348 
Trunnion, Admiral, 243 
Tulliver, Mrs., 377 
Tulliver, Maggie, 378 
Turgenief, 384 
Turner, YVilliam, 337 
Twelfth Night, 93, 113, 114, 125 
Twickenham, 204, 205 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, 109 
Two in a Balcony, 325 
Tyndale, William, 65 

Udall, Nicholas, 94 
Unities, the, 94 
Universities, the, 94, 95, 97 
Unto this Last, 338 
Unwin, Mrs. Mary, 264 
Urn Burial, 147 
“ Use of Riches,” 209 
Usk, 156 
Utopia, 62, 63 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 189 
Vanity Fair, 368-370 
Vanity of Human Wishes, The,” 214 
Vathek, History of the Caliph, 251 
Vaughan, Henry, 153, 156 
Venice Preserved, 187 
Venus and Adonis, 83, 108 
Versailles, 204 

Vicar of Wakefield , The, 247, 262 
Vice, the, in miracle plays, 92 
Victoria, 308, 309 

Victorian Bra, 304, 309 ; comparable 
with Elizabethan, 308; general 
characteristics, 309-310 ; its stren- 


INDEX 


433 


iiousness, 310 ; its moral impulse, 
318; tendency toward reflection, 
324 : its sociological drift, 340 ; re- 
action against insistent morality, 
349 ; Swinburne, 350 ; preponder- 
ance of lyric form, 351 
Village , The, 263 
Villette, 374 

“Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, 
A,” 194 
Viola, 113 
Virgil, 180 

Virgin Martyr, The, 130 

Vishnu, 303 

Vivian Grey , 362 

Vohr, Vich Ian, 359 

Volpone, 125, 126 

Volsung, 348 

Voltaire, 227 

Vox Clamantis , 49, 50 

Voyage to Lisbon, Journal of a, 239 

Vulgar Errors, 147 

Wales, 10, 11, IS, 26, 27, 156, 288, 302 
Waller, Edmund, 178 
Walpole, Horace, 250, 258, 260 
Walsh, William, 206 
Walthamstow, 346 
Walton, Isaac, 150 
“ Wanderer, The,” 17, 34 
Warden, The, 372 
Warner, William, 85 
Waverley , 357, 359 
Way of the World , The , 189 
“ We are Seven,” 274 
Webster, John, 131, 134-135, 294 
Welsh, Jane, 314 
Wesley, John, 270 
Westbrook, Harriet, 288, 289 
Western, Sophia, 239, 240, 241 
Westminster Review, 376 
Westminster School, 178, 264 
Westward Ho, 375 
West Wind, Ode to (Shelley), 290 
Whig Examiner, The, 197 
White Devil, The, 134 
“ Who is Silvia?” 109 


“ Widsith,” 4 
“ Wife’s Lament, The,” 16 
Wilde, Jonathan, 233 
Wildfire, Madge, 360 
Wild Gallant, The , 178 
William the Conqueror, 20, 21 
William III., 180, 191, 232 
Winchester, 19 
“ Windsor Forest,” 204 
“Winter,” 254 
Winter's Tale, A, 121 
Wither, George, 149. 150 
Woman in the Mbon, The, 98 
Women Beware Women, 131 
Woodlanders , The, 380, 382 
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 271, 273 
Wordsworth, William, 15, 228, 
253, 254, 266, 292, 295, 302, 305, 
307, 310, 315, 320, 322, 326, 339 
351, 358 ; as “ exponent of the new 
poetry,” 271-272; his life, 274; 
his nature poetry, 275-»276 ; his 
treatment of human nature, 276- 
277 ; his mysticism, 277-278 ; his 
“ metaphysical imagination,” 279 ; 
difficulties in approaching him, 
280-281 

“ World, The,” Vaughan’s poem, 156 
Worldly Wiseman, Mr., 172 
Wuthering Heights, 374 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 65-67, 68, 76, 
81 

Wycherley, William, 188, 189, 209 
Wyclif, John, 43, 45, 50-51, 55, 59, 
61, 64 

Wyclif’s Bible, 50, 170 
Wye, the, 278 

Yarrow, 284 

“ Yarrow Unvisited,” 274 
Yeast, 375 

“ Ye Mariners of England,” 283 
Young, Edward, 212, 253, 255, 257 

Zola, 372, 384 
Zanoni, 362 
Zutphen, 71 


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